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OF 

THE UNIVERSITY 
OF CALIFORNIA 

LOS ANGELES 



JOHN RANDOLPH HAYNES 

AND DORA HAYNES FOUNDATION 

COLLECTION 






\ 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



BY HENRY C. ROWLAND 



To Windward 

THIRD EDITION 

"Crisp and strong, full of breezlness and virile 
humanity." Brooklyn Eagle. 

" A capital story told with a spirit and go that are 
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The Wanderers 

THIRD EDITION 

"A little breathless toward the end, the reader 
enjoys every moment spent with Brian Kinard, the 
roving son of an Irish earl." 

Chicago Record-Herald. 

"Full of complications and surprises which hold 
the reader's attention to the end. An unusually 
good story of actual life at sea." 

Boston Transcript. 



Each reith frontispiece in colors, by 
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12mo. Cloth. $1.50 



A. S. BARNES & COMPANY 




" I see that you go in for heads a bit yourself," said Lynch. 

Page pp 



The Mountain 
of Fears 

By 

Henry C. Rowland 

Author of "The Wanderers", "To Windward" 
and "Sea Scamps". 

Illustrated 




New York 

A. S. Barnes & Co. 
1905 



COPYRIGHT, 1905, BY 
A. S. BARNES & CO. 

Published October, 190& 



-3535 



7X7 
DOCTOR LEYDEN 

WHOSE ILLUMINATING PERSONALITY 
AND STRANGE EXPERIENCES I HAVE 
VENTURED TO INTERPRET IN THE 
HOPE THAT WHEN HE RETURNS FROM 
HIS Q UEST IN THE "FORBIDDEN LAND " 
HB WILL PARDON MY PRESUMPTION. 



785534 



CONTENTS 



PAGB 

THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 1 

On, AND WATER 46 

THE SHEARS OF ATROPOS 80 

R.OSENTHAL THE JEW 118 

Two SAVAGES 158 

Two GENTLEMEN 199 

THE BAMBOULA 245 

INTO THE DAKK . ,,,,,,,,,.. 270 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 




OCTOB," said my shipmate, Dr. 
Leyden, ''have you ever made 
any especial study of nervous 
diseases central nervous dis 
eases morbid conditions result 
ing from a derangement of the central cells 1 ' ' 
I told him that I had done only such work 
in this branch as a general practice would 
require, but that I had observed some few 
cases of especial interest during a military 
surgical service in the East, and proceeded 
to cite one or two instances of mental vaga 
ries resulting from gunshot wounds in the 
head. 

Leyden leaned both elbows on the taffrail 
and listened restlessly. Our little ship 
swashed through the short sling of the Span 
ish Main, the Pole star gleaming ahead, the 

1*1 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



Southern Cross blazing astern, and all about 
the white, flashing crests of the phosphores 
cent sea. Usually Leyden was a good listener, 
but this night he seemed impatient, restive, 
to such an extent that I finally paused, an 
noyed, for nothing is so irritating as lack of 
attention to a solicited reply. 

"Ach ! but those cases are in the line of the 
ordinary !" he exclaimed. 

"Pardon me," I replied, "but the last case 
I have given was distinctly out of the ordi 
nary." 



. . 



'I am awkward, Doctor," said Leyden, 
apologetically. "I mean that the relations 
of cause and effect follow the usual course 
the histological changes in the cell produced 
impaired function of the organ and these pri 
mary changes were the result of trauma. But 
have you ever had occasion to observe the re 
verse of this condition the action of the or 
gan on the center like a nightmare, where 
one has the liver poisoning the central 
cells 

[2]. 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



I interrupted in my turn. Leyden was no 
doubt a skilled naturalist, a close observer 
and a man of deep power of thought and an 
alysis, but he was not a physician, had never 
made a regular study of physiological chem 
istry, and was, therefore, scarcely in a posi 
tion to argue with a person who had. 

"Such cases are not infrequent," I an 
swered. "The ancient Greeks understood 
that much, as we see from their terms. * Hypo 
chondria ' ; under the ribs the liver probably 
poisoning the brain, if you like ; then there is 
the condition of hysteria often accompanying 
a movable kidney ; the action of certain drugs 
on special centers - " 

"Such as canndbis indica?" interrupted 
Leyden, "which affects the sense of elapsed 
time and makes the subject happy or what 
is that principle, Doctor, which produces xan- 
thopsia, or yellow vision, and makes one slug 
gish and depressed?'* 

"Xanthopsia is an early symptom of san 
tonin poisoning," I answered. "The alkaloid 
[3] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



is obtained from the unexpanded flower-heads 
of the -- " 

"Artemisia maritima yes I know the 
plant but the active principle might occur 
elsewhere ? ' ' 

"Possibly - " 

"It is wonderful," mused Leyden, in the 
self -communicative tone that was often diffi 
cult to follow "the microscopic filament that 
makes or unmakes a man ; the minute neurons 
which carry such a potent impulse like the 
flash crossing a continent on a tiny wire to 
send two great nations to war. The wire is 
short-circuited, the nation disgraced; the 
neuron short-circuited, the individual dis 
graced. Such a thing once happened to me, 
Doctor. 

"This was in Papua, an awesome country 
which holds in its dark recesses many of the 
things one wants and most of those which 
one does not. I had gone there with two 
other white men to look for gold. It is a mar 
velous country, Doctor ; I do not think there is 
[4] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEAKS 



any other like it; such a country as was pic 
tured in the old imaginative school of paint 
ing; a valley, through which winds a mist 
river flowing intangibly from a mirage 
through a canyon bridged by a rainbow ; trav 
elers ' palms, tree-ferns, lianas, dream-trees 
heavy with strange fruits and brilliant blos 
soms, in the distance mystic mountains rising 
as they recede, green yet forbidding, the homes 
of genii; their summits fantastic the whole 
a beautiful, impossible, frightfully fascinat 
ing fairyland. This was that place where we 
went to look for gold. 

"My two companions were failures most 
gold-seekers are. I was not old enough to be 
a failure myself. No matter what the faults 
of these others, one did not deny their virtues. 
One was a Hollander, Vinckers, an engineer, 
a brilliant man, but one ready to step over 
the edge of heaven in sheer restlessness and 
a desire to see what was held by the abyss; 
the other was a Scotchman, disagreeable, mo 
rose, taciturn, harsh of speech and visage. 
I5J. 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



Both held hearts of steel ; they were the most 
quietly courageous men that I have ever 
known. I ask you to remember this, Doctor, 
in consideration of what came later. Their 
courage had been tried and proved in many 
desperate situations . . . Ach ! ' ' Ley den be 
gan to mutter again, shaping his thoughts 
with his tongue until I could with diffi 
culty catch this thought "the filament the 
neuron cut the sympathetic nerve in the 
neck of a horse and the animal be 
gins to sweat upon the affected side; 
puncture the floor of the fourth ventricle 
of a dog diabetes." He raised his voice. 
" There is a little center of thermogenesis, is 
there not, Doctor, the irritation of which will 

raise the temperature 

"We wandered through this shadow-land, 
this illusory place of promise whose inhabi 
tants were ofttimes starving. Cannibals? 
yes ; many white men have been that through 
acute starvation; chronic only tends to con 
firm the vice. They were a strange, shy, 
[6] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



kindly people to us, who understood such. 
The 'Barbary Coast' in San Francisco, the 
parks in Melbourne, or the water-front in 
Hong Kong, are all more dangerous than 
Papua. "We wandered through these people, 
accompanied by kindness, a whole tribe some 
times bearing our burdens until they reached 
a district dangerous to them, but where we 
made new friends. We wandered through 
this dreamland unmolested, walked with its 
fantastic peoples, black and brown and pie 
bald; strayed in and out to the click-click- 
click of our little hammers, meeting dangers, 
it is true the dangers which might confront 
a child walking blindfolded through a botani 
cal garden filled with perils to its ignorance 
and we tap-tap-tapped with our little ham 
mers right up to the slopes of the Malang-o- 
mor the 'Mountain of Fears' and we 
tap-tap-tapped on its slopes of quartz and 
basalt, little thinking that we knocked at the 
door of an evil spirit." 
The bluff bows of our little ship smashed 
[7] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



the short seas into a flat track of phosphores- 
ence, and against the pale background I saw 
a tremor of some sort shake Leyden's square 
shoulders, and it seemed to me that his voice 
was slightly breathless. 

" 'The Mountain of Fears/ so our Papuans 
called it, and threw down their burdens at the 
edge of the stream and refused point-blank 
to stir another step ; more than that, they im 
plored us to go no farther ourselves, and a 
girl given to MacFarlane by a chief threw 
her arms around the knees of the rough old 
Gael and wailed like a stricken soul. An odd 
thing, that, Doctor, this cannibal girl given to 
the Scotchman a month before by this chief, 
to whom MacFarlane had given a harmonica 
on which he had first rendered 'The Bonnie, 
Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond' in a manner 
which should, by right, have got him speared. 
The girl had fancied him, slaved for him, fol 
lowed him everywhere like a dog, and had 
ended by softening him to such an extent 
that he ceased to curse and his manner was 
[8] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



less harsh the elevating effect of a cannibal 
upon a Covenanter! another inversion in 
this hallucinating country where the only ac 
tuality seemed the rapping of our little ham 
mers. 

"This girl, as I say, implored MacFarlane 
not to go on ; for Vinckers and me she did not 
care; none of the women had much fancied 
us, while MacFarlane 's lack of comeliness 
was almost bizarre; they were obedient, of 
course but that was about all. 

"MacFarlane leered up at the great forbid 
ding mountain as it thrust against the dome 
of the sky its summit of snowy quartz, a-glis- 
ten in the bright sunlight thirteen thousand 
feet above the level of the sea. 

" 'A cauld slope yon too cauld for a lass 
in naething but a kiltie. Ye'd best bide here 
'til I come. ' He spoke to her in the vernacu 
lar, with which we were all three familiar, and 
told her to await his return. 

"It was hot in that valley a stewpan, with 
ering, stifling with the equatorial reek which 
[9] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



wilts one to the bone; the nights stunk of 
fever. It was the southeast slope of the 
mountain which presented to us; and as we 
gazed up toward it from the little nest of 
trees where we had made our camp, the late 
sun blazed against its worn flank, and sud 
denly the broad, barren belt between the for 
est and the formation of quartz above the tim 
ber belt seemed to burst into flame and shone 
and sparkled and glittered as if flecked with 
scales of gold. 

" 'An omen!* cried Vinckers. 'The Moun 
tain of Hope not the Mountain of Fears! 
Something tells me that we shall find gold 
there veins of it, knuckles of it perhaps the 
bones of the mountain are solid gold; why 
not, in such a country as this?' 

"The sun dropped behind the high hills to 
the westward, swiftly, as it does on the equa 
tor, and even more swiftly the gray shadow 
ran from the foot to the summit of the great 
mountain. It was as if one saw the color fade 
in the face of a dying man, and it seemed to 
[10] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



me that a cold draught struck down from the 
heights. 

" 'The Mountain of Fears,' said I 'the 
Mountain of Fears,' and as I stared at the 
monster on whose bristling hide we planned 
to crawl, parasites, searching for a spot to 
lodge our stings, the first shadow of forebod 
ing swept over my spirits, just as the swift 
shadow had risen to throw its cold, blue light 
across the snowy quartz-field. 

''In the valley we found the first signs of 
plenty; there' were fruit and game and a sort 
of wild yam in abundance; and here we de 
cided to rest for several days on the edge of 
the stream, for MacFarlane had a suppurat 
ing heel where he had trod upon a thorn, and 
Vinckers was suffering from a great nettle- 
rash upon his body. All three of us were hun 
gry and our blood ran too thin to encounter 
the cold nights higher up the slope. 

"We camped in a grove of trees which 
looked like the papaya and bore a fruit unlike 
any I have ever seen. It was shaped like an 

[Hi 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



avacado, had a pulp like wax, or bone-mar 
row, which was greasy to the touch, oily, and 
held a faint flavor of sandal-wood. At first 
we tried it with caution, for our native friends 
would not eat anything which grew in the 
shadow of the Malang-o-mor; neither would 
they sleep in the narrow valley, but retired 
each evening to the edge of the forest on the 
farther slope. 

"We rested and we slept, and we ate of the 
fruit, which I called myela, because I did not 
think that it had ever been described, and I 
called it so from its resemblance to marrow; 
also, we drank of the stream, which was a 
deep ruby, spring-cooled and fragrant, but 
of which none of the Papuans would drink 
excepting the girl, Tomba, given to MacFar- 
lane by the chief. She ate and drank and 
shuddered and watched her lord narrowly, as 
if waiting for the curse to fall and wishful to 
avert it. 

"In the early morning we hunted the game 
or clicked with our little hammers on the 
[12] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEAES 



crumbling quartz through which the river 
gnawed its way. There was gold in the coun 
try, gold in the stream ; one could pan enough 
dust in a light day's work to pay highly for 
the labor. But we wanted more than dust 
we wanted the pure metal which none doubted 
we should find on the virgin breast of the 
mountain, and our fancy saw us winding back 
to the sea with our native tribe deep-laden 
with the wealth of buccaneers winding out 
through defiles of mountain and forest, heavy 
with the plunder of the dread Malang-o-mor. 

' ' Odd, Doctor ; gold and dreams and sweat 
and death how they all mixed together to 
strike the average which maintains the trim 

of the world " Leyden's voice had sunk 

to muttering again, and he shivered, despite 
the humid warmth of the night. 

"Daytimes we dwelt in Paradise and at 
night lay down to sleep, having first drunk 
of the stream, which we christened 'Lethe,' 
because on its banks we forgot the hardship 
and hunger of our long journey to the valley. 
[13] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



A Lethe it must have been, because each 
morning, when the late sun looked over the 
shoulder of the mountain and whipped up the 
blanket of mist stretched like a tent from the 
slope to the hills beyond, we forgot the mias 
mas of the night and the fetid fever smells 
and spores that spawned through the 
hours of hot darkness, and all of the 
while we ate more of the fat, oily 
fruit and less of other and more whole 
some things, for this fruit of itself appeared 
to satisfy all needs, and we looked at each 
other and laughed at the physical changes of 
the few days, for we were growing fat and 
flabby as paretics. We slept a great deal, too, 
days as well as nights, and the sleep was at 
first of that delicious kind which one enjoys 
in the moments between waking and rising 
a conscious sleep, in which one feels the 
myriad renovative changes of tissue, when 
each little cell seems to stretch and tingle 
and feed against the waste of the coming day. 
Feed they did, for the flesh came back, full 
[14] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



and soft, to our gaunt frames, and we looked 
at one another and laughed fat, gurgling 
laughs, and lay and smoked with our heads in 
the laps of the girls, and the tapping of our 
little hammers was heard but seldom on the 
flinty foot of the Mountain of Fears. 

''The tribe had camped, as I have said, 
across the valley on the edge of the forest, 
but each day they came to see us, and 
we laughed at their surprise when they 
saw that all was well. We held them with 
beads and baubles and food and friend- 
Kness chiefly the latter, for natives, like 
dogs, love to place allegiance with the 
higher mentality. One was puzzled that 
physical need had not run counter to super 
stition, for despite the plenty of the valley 
we found no trace of other inhabitants. 

"Perhaps, we had been three weeks in the 
valley, when one night I awoke dripping with 
perspiration and with a sense of nameless ill. 
'A nightmare,' thought I, 'of which the color 
is lost and only the depression remains/ It 

.[151 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



held me broad awake and then for the first 
time I fully realized the nauseous reek of the 
fever-fog. One smelled odors which seemed 
to emanate from the entrails of the earth. 
You know, Doctor, the nauseous, charnel 
stench of rotting insects and vegetation, with 
the fetid breath of the flower that issues from 
the mouth of a great, carnivorous plant? You 
have seen these trap-like flowers, if one may 
call them such, which grow in the botanical 
gardens of Demerara? Br'r'r'rgh! And as I 
lay, hot and cold and clammy, with a heavy 
weight upon my chest, and thought of how we 
had lain and breathed that thin effluvium, the 
vehicle for myriad infusoria and plasmodiae, 
this hypochrondriac fear became reason 
able, and I marveled that we were still alive. 
"Vinckers and MacFarlane slept heavily, 
torpidly, and their breathing was the ster 
torous gasping of drunkards. "We lay in ham 
mocks of plaited grass under a shelter of 
thatch; the girl's hammock was beside Mac 
Farlane j and as I lay there, broad awake and 
[16] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



still depressed, my lungs half drowned in the 
dense humor of the valley and my ears ring 
ing from the clamorous insect mob without, I 
heard a stifled, whimpering cry the moai* of 
a little child who has been whipped foi in 
heriting nerves. It struck a chill there was 
a great deal that was chill in that place of hot 
fears, cold passions, joyless content and light- 
hearted sloth a place where one's skin crept 
clammily while the bones were burning. 

" 'Who is that!' I asked, quite loudly, for 
I did not care if the others awoke. 

' ' There came in answer the whimper of one 
too frightened to speak. Did you ever, as a 
child, Doctor, waken with the nightmare, 
afraid to cry out, afraid to move, tortured by 
the whimpers wrung out in reasonless terror? 
It was that kind of a sound. 

" 'What is it !' I asked. 

" 'It is Tomba.' 

" 'What is the matter with you?' said I. 

" 'I am afraid.' 

" 'And what are you afraid of f ' 
I 17]. 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



"She found her voice then and began to 
tell me, but there my limited knowledge of the 
dialect failed, for I had no such linguistic 
scope as to-day, when one dialect more or less 
is simply a matter of ear and comparison. 
There was something in her speech of devils 
and death, and she kept repeating this and I 
do not know what besides and then, as I 
was trying to reassure her as one might a 
child or a horse, less through the reason than 
the senses, the soothing of primitive sounds, 
a startling thing occurred. MacFarlane, 
whose breathing had become more labored, 
like that of a man rapidly climbing the ladder 
of consciousness from deep oblivion, gasped 
once or twice and awoke with a scream. 
Vinckers, roused with the echo ringing in his 
ears, awoke with a muffled shout a strangled, 
bleating shout such as might come from a 
slaughtered animal. MacFarlane, but half 
awake, screamed again. At this Tomba's 
breathless terror found outlet in a shriek that 
swept out under the low mist, struck the 
[18] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



mountain-side and quavered away in count 
less reverberations. 

" Vinckers shouted again and leaped from 
his hammock. 

" 'Be still, you fool!' I cried, roughly. 

11 'Wha wha wha ' quavered Mac- 

Farlane. 

" 'What's the matter with you?' I cried, 
impatiently. 'Are you a couple of girls just 
out of a convent?' 

" 'What is the matter?' asked Vinckers, 
thickly. Tomba was sobbing hysterically. 

" 'MacFarlane wakes up with a night 
mare!' said I, 'and sets you howling like a 
maniac. ' My own fright made me irritable. 

' ' ' Odd, ' muttered Vinckers ; ' odd I had a 
nightmare, too.' 

" 'Ye hag-ridden fule,' snarled MacFar 
lane, 'bawlin' and yammerin' like a bull! I 
had no nightmare mysel ' ! ' He rolled heavily 
in his hammock. 'Fetch me a drink o' wa 
ter, lass water ! ' he added, in the vernacular. 

"Vinckers sat up in his hammock, let his 
[19] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



feet hang over the side and, dropping his head 
between his heavy shoulders, stared down the 
valley. There was a moon somewhere behind 
the mist ; this mist, diaphanous, vague, of any 
depth, yet lifted well above our heads, shone, 
not white, or colorless, as a vapor should, but 
a golden yellow; everything seemed golden, 
was becoming more golden daily the longer 
we stayed in that place of mockeries, and the 
reason of this was based on something more 
solid than a sentiment. What was the name 
of that drug, Doctor, which when ingested 
gives the yellow tinge to the vision? San- 
tonica? yes, perhaps that was it; perhaps 
its alkaloids were contained in that fatty 
fruit ; perhaps it was only that the moon was 
one of those ripe, luscious, golden moons one 
sees on the equator. At any rate, the light 
came not pale and ghastly, as it should have 
been, but a luscious golden yellow; and that 
made it the more unearthly, as it illumined 
and gave a golden color to these dream ob 
jects the fan-palms, the vague rock-heaps, 
[20] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



the vistas between which should have been 
ethereal, but, because of this succulent, sickly 
yellow light, were too material; and the 
aroma, which should have been dank, no 
doubt, but elusive, was a physical stench. 
Ach! a witch-fire would have burned in that 
place like a fat pine torch; one would have 
scorched one's hands near a feu-follet; there 
was a ponderosity to this place of ghosts. Can 
you conceive a fat ghost, Doctor a fat, un 
clean ghost, who has clanked around, drag 
ging his ball and chain until the sweat pours 
down his fat face a malodorous sweat a 
sweat that physically offends while it 
frightens? Once in my youth, in Leipsic, I 
went into the anatomical laboratory, and 
there was on the table a fat subject a 
woman and she still wore some gold-washed 
rings and had some baubles in her ears of 
too mean value to appeal to the cupidity of 
whoever had fetched her there. Br'r'r'rgh! 
She was pathetic, of course, but I was not old 
enough to feel that then. I can never forget 
[21] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



how much more awful she was to me than 
were the thin, meager, attenuated subjects 
who were consistent with the place. It 
was such a ripe, rotten ghastliness as 
this that was held in that valley which glim 
mered away at the foot of the Mountain of 
Fears." 

Leyden paused, quivering, shuddering. One 
did not need to see him silhouetted against 
the phosphorescence to see that he shud 
dered ; he was in a tremor, and the light from 
the rook kamer striking his strong, keen, ner 
vous face showed that it was damp, wet, 
viscid with a moisture other than the humor 
of the Gulf Stream. He was living the thing 
over again with all of his high-strung, Teuton 
nervousness ; and suddenly it struck me that 
it was hardly decent to let him go on that it 
was my duty to interrupt him, just as it has 
been my duty at times to interrupt the un 
pleasant indulgences of other morbid im 
pulses. But, on the other hand, speech is the 
safety valve of the mind; also, it is just to 
[22J 



sit passively and watch for the symptom 
which states the case. 

"Vinckers observed this thing," continued 
Leyden. "Vinckers was an unimaginative 
man, and consequently the impression on him 
was as it would have been upon a dry plate, 
or the tracings of a seismograph, or any other 
machine which records automatically without 
contributing anything of its own. Vinckers 
was rather low in the animal scale by low 
I mean primitive ; as a man he was a splendid 
specimen, but he was animal enough to get 
rather more from his instincts than from his 
reasoning like most women. He watched 
this thing, this yellow light coming through 
the mist and touching with its sickly yellow 
tinge all of the fantastic objects in the picture 
that belonged to the imaginative school of 
painting. He looked quite steadily at the 
dream-trees, too symmetrical to be real; the 
fantastic rock shapes, too fancifully gro 
tesque to be the work of nature ; he observed 
the yellow light upon the sluggish stream, 
[23] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



which flowed like molasses, and looked 
rather like it, too ; the fringe of the forest 
in fact, all of the component parts of the pic 
ture just as some morbid painting genius 
would have placed them and Vinckers 
growled like a dog who sees something mov 
ing about the camp-fire invisible to his 
master. ' ' 

Leyden turned to me insistently, claiming 
my corroboration of all this that he had 
worked out through hypertrophied recollec 
tion. "Is it not true, Doctor, that logic sup 
plants instinct; that as soon as we learned 
how to tell by deduction where the person we 
sought had gone we were no longer able to 
lay our noses to the ground and decide the 
matter?" He began to maunder again his 
auto-philosophy which was so hard to follow. 
"There are plenty of plants in nature which 
would poison the animals of the section if in 
stinct did not prompt them to avoid these ; a 
man will often eat of something and subse 
quently wonder at the cause of his derange- 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



ment; the animal will know and avoid this 
thing. At that time I was conscious of a 
morbid physical condition, but was unable to 
trace its source. Vinckers, lacking imagina 
tion, knew at once. 'Heaven,' I heard him 
mutter, 'was there ever such a mockery! We 
come to look for gold and we land in quaran 
tine ! ' It struck me as a new idea and I al 
most laughed. Gold and death, sickness and 
disease! How appropriate that they should 
be unichromatic ! But it was Vinckers ' next 
words which struck me. 'It is that accursed 
corpse-wax!' he muttered, 'that greasy stuff 
that we have been growing fat on!' Ugh! 
You see, Doctor, he was able to link physi 
cally cause and effect. 

"MacFarlane began to mutter. Tomba 
brought him some water and he drank thirst 
ily, swallowing with the audible gulps of a 
horse. 

" 'I'm feverish,' he said, panting from the 
long draught, 'verra nervous and feverish. 
'Tis a feverish place, this. ' 
[25] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



" 'It's rotten with fever!' growled Vinck- 
ers, who, like myself, spoke English better 
than the Scotchman. 'It stinks of fever 
smell it ! We were fools to stay here so long. ' 

" 'We are a pack of lotus-eaters,' said I. 
'You are right, Vinckers; it is this accursed 
stuff we have been eating this adiposcere! 
We will get out of here to-morrow. ' 

" 'Do you feel as if your inside was filled 
with lead, Leyden?' asked Vinckers. 

" 'It is worse than that,' said I 'molten 
lead.' 

"You see, Doctor, we had been living on 
this rich, fatty stuff, which certainly con 
tained a great deal of oil and I do not know 
what else besides narcotics, no doubt. You 
know the richness of an avocado? They will 
tell you in some places that this fruit pro 
duces biliousness, but I have never heard that 
it had a soporific effect, as undoubtedly had 
the myela fruit. Then we had taken no exer 
cise. 

' ' I think that night was hotter than most ; we 
[26] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



could not sleep, so up we got and smoked and 
discussed our plans for the future at least, 
we started to discuss them, but even as we 
argued a lethargy came over us, and one by 
one we fell asleep, though dreading to do so 
and striving to keep awake through fear of 
another nightmare. An odd condition, Doc 
tor, this drowsy f earsomeness ; no doubt like 
a patient narcotized before an operation; 
dread fighting a drug until the latter triumphs 
and the patient whimpers off into fear-filled 
somnolence. 

"The sun came to suck away the fever- 
mist and with it much of our dread. We 
laughed at the fears of the night and awaited 
the coming of the Papuans, but awaited in 
vain. I think, Doctor, that Tomba's scream 
had floated across the valley, telephonic be 
neath the mist to reach the listeners in the 
hills. At any rate, no human thing came 
near us that day. Later, when the shadows 
began to lengthen again, we wandered out, 
Vinckers and I, prospecting towards the na- 
[27] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



tive camp I with a rifle, watchful for game, 
Vinckers humming to himself an old Dutch 
tune, careless in the full force of the sun 
light, wandering behind me and clicking on 
the rocks with his little hammer. 

"I was strangely lacking in breath as I 
climbed the hillside; as for Vinckers, he 
halted at the end of a hundred steps and 
would go up no further. Back at our camp 
MacFarlane lay smoking, with his head in 
the lap of the girl. I alone toiled up the slope, 
soft in heart and fibre, the sweat pouring 
from me in streams, sodden, with the spring 
gone out of my ankles and everything about 
me of a strange, sickly yellow hue which dark 
ened as my breath came faster. 

"I found the Papuans departed, so back I 
went, blubbering with breathlessness, mutter 
ing, fatigued, depressed, sluggish with sleep. 
yinckers I found with his back against a rock, 
sleeping heavily. As I bent to rouse him my 
eyes fell upon a specimen which lay between 
his knees, and I saw that the little hammer 
1281 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



had cleft it open to lay bare a thick band of 
virgin gold. Vinckers had tapped at the door 
of Fortune and she had opened, and Vinckers 
had looked within and fallen asleep! Had 
the goddess ever a more loutish lover? He 
was sweating, too, in his sleep, and I saw 
where the sweat had left a yellow stain upon 
his neckerchief, and as the late sun struck 
him it seemed to me that his skin also was 
of a chromish tint. You know the flabby pal 
lor of the clay-eater? It was like that, fat 
and flabby, but yellow rather than pale. 

"Back we went to the camp, where Mac- 
Farlane still lay and smoked or slept with 
his ugly, shaggy head in the lap of 
Tomba. 

11 'Gold!' I said, 'the mountain is full of it. 
'If it lies about loose here on the hillside, 
think of what it must be yonder where the 
mountain springs have done our hydraulic 
mining and washing in the same formation!' 
I pointed above us to the flank of the Malang- 
o-mor; the late sun struck it aslant, throwing 
[29] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



sharp, purple shadows into the numberless 
seams and fissures eroded in the crumbling 
crust; it flashed as it had each evening and 
glowed redly; high above, as the sun sank 
lower, the quartz beds threw back the deep 
ening azure of the sky. 

" 'Perhaps it is gold,' said I, 'that bright 
stuff which glitters so; at any rate there is 
gold to be had for the taking, while we lie 
here and bloat and rot and waken screaming 
in the night. To-morrow we must go up. ' 

" 'I'm no fit mysel', lad,' said MacFarlane. 
'I hae the fever; I maun rest.' 

" 'You will rest here through eternity,' 
said I, ' if you do not come away at once. You 
are yellow as a Chinaman and there's not a 
line left in your face.' And with the aid of 
the girl I set about preparing a meal." 

Leyden sucked in his breath sharply filled 
his deep lungs like a man coming out of the 
dense, polluted atmosphere of a crowded car 
or clinic. 

"That night I awoke thrice, and each time 
[30] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEAES 



a cold terror was clamping my heart, until I 
seemed to shrivel in the utter obliteration of 
all else. The dread was featureless; there 
was no dream, only this crushing, numbing, 
withering fear which froze sound and motion ; 
and I lay and listened to the quick, faint tick- 
tick-tick of my heart-beats and waited to die 
and, instead, I slept again, even while 
sweating with fear. The last time I remained 
awake; and as conscience dawned fuller this 
fear sat upon the distorted objects of the 
place, the swinging bulks of my companions, 
the dark roof, and as I looked out into the 
lambent, mellow-lighted valley fear walked 
beneath the vague, symmetrical palms and 
the shimmering umbrella-trees and lurked in 
the recesses of the fantastic rocks. Fear 
walked on the water of the oily, sluggish river 
that flowed with the sheen of molten gold 
through raw, eroded banks where the lips of 
the rocks protruded like the ragged edge of 
an ulcer. 

"I lay inert, paralyzed, and presently 
[31] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



heard a faint, shuddering sigh; presently a 
moan, deep, hopeless, almost expiring. 

" 'Are you awake, Vinckers?' I managed 
to whisper, and my tongue could hardly ar 
ticulate the words. 

" 'Yes are you, MacFarlane?' 

" 'Ou aye, ou aye what is it oh, what is 
it, man?' 

" 'Have you had the nightmare?' I asked. 

" 'Yes without the dream only the fear 
what is it?' 

" 'Ou, lads, we maun leave this place as 
soon as 'tis light ' 

" 'Hush! ah, hush!' whispered Vinckers. 
'I am burning up come over here, Leyden 
I am afraid to move I was never afraid be 
fore never in my life ah what was that ! ' 

" 'Ah, tush, man!' MacFarlane 's rough 
voice choked. 'D'ye want to drive the heart 
of a man from his body? Tomba, lass, 
Tomba ! ' There was no reply. 

"'Tomba!' said I, sharply. 'Tomba 
Tomba!' 

[32] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



" 'Hush! ah, hush!' whispered Vinckers. 

" 'Why shall I hush!' said I, and my voice 
was shaking. 'Waken her, MacFarlane.' 

"The Scotchman thrust out his great arm 
slowly, and in the faint yellow light I saw 
him snatch it quickly away; heard the chok 
ing rattle in his throat; felt my own heart 
flickering like a candle burned low. 

" <0u ou ou ' 

' ' ' Hush hush s 'h 'hh ! ' whi sper ed Vinck 
ers. . 

"And then, Doctor" Ley den's voice had 
sunk until one scarce caught the bitter mock 
ery ' 1 1 did the bravest act of my life. I slid 
out of my hammock." Leyden laughed in a 
way that sent a chill through me. 

"Can you understand, Doctor? Do you 
know what fear is 1 Did you ever awake sud 
denly from a dreamless sleep with a devitaliz 
ing fear crushing the very blood out of your 
heart? No dream no recollection only the 
fear sometimes hung like a black mantle over 
the nearest object, no matter how familiar. 
,[33] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



Purely reasonless the organ acting on the 
cell; an inversion of effect on cause. In our 
own case, if one presumed that our diet, or 
water, or the fever, or any other extrinsic 
cause had deranged the organ perhaps the 
liver and thus poisoned the cell the single 
center of Fear as some drugs affect other 
centers murderous erotic as Charcot, I 
believe it is, demonstrates that the odor of 
certain perfumes will throw the hypnotized 
patient into paroxysms of fear - 

1 'I never did a thing so difficult as to get 
on my feet and walk to the hammock of that 
poor girl. She was quite dead and the wet 
frost of the fear which had killed her lay 
moist and chill on face and breast. I did not 
dare to light a match to look at her ; there is 
a limit, Doctor, to the courage of every man. 
I was never really frightened before; I can 
never remember being really frightened since; 
and my profession is one of countless risks 
to life. This was something far, far worse 
the reason stampeding with the will - 
[34] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



"Then the lethargy crept on again. I 
crawled back to my hammock and, still fight 
ing the fear, fell asleep. The others slept 
before I and I could hear them whining and 
whimpering like young puppies taken from 
the litter. 

"I was the first to awaken when the light 
came. My fear was gone and I lay drenched 
in perspiration, yet comfortable, unwilling to 
rouse myself. 

" 'Oh, the awfu' nicht!' moaned MacFar- 
lane, and covered his face with his gnarled 
hands. Vinckers did not speak, but shoul 
dered his kit. 

11 'Let us go,' he said, and we filed away 
from the place without looking back at the 
cannibal girl in the plaited hammock, her 
drawn face covered with the Scotchman's 
only neckerchief. 

"We wandered down the valley looking for 

a place to ford the stream and begin the as 

cent. We had no carriers, no goods, no espe 

cial hopes, but these things did not trouble 

[35] 



THE MOUNTAIN' OF FEARS 



us. We wandered along the banks of the 
dream-river and beneath the symmetrical 
trees, and filed between the fantastic rocks, 
which, from habit alone, we tapped with our 
little hammers; and still the sun had not 
looked over the edge of the eastern rampart 
of the valley, and we journeyed in the shadow 
of the Mountain of Fears. The Mountain of 
Fears the Mountain of Fears and nothing 
but peace on every hand ! Nothing of harm 
no danger of man or beast, nothing of heat, 
nothing of cold a misty, dreamy peace ; the 
dreads of the night supplanted by an apathe 
tic shame which forbade discussion of these 
things. As for Tomba why, she died of 
fever, poor girl what else? 

"We wandered down the valley and soon 
we came to a ford ; there we crossed and toiled 
on up the slope of the mountain up, up, up, 
panting, sweating, breathless, not clear as to 
purpose, but struggling to get up because 
we did not know ! As we climbed we tapped 
at the stones, because we were used to tap- 
[36] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



ping and chipping with our little hammers, 
and when we halted for the night we were 
high up on a wooded plateau, and the air was 
fine and thin and sweet with healthy odors of 
moss and fern and clean flowers. We were on 
the hip of the Mountain of Fears. 

' ' We crouched on the edge of the precipice 
and peered down into the valley as the sun 
slipped over the crest of the opposite hills and 
drew after it the curtain of mist which hid 
the greasy river and the unreal trees and the 
jumping rocks, which from above looked like 
Titan children frozen at play. The mist hid 
all of these things, but now we were above in 
stead of beneath it. Before it grew denser 
it formed a thin, flat pale through which one 
might look and see these objects, symmetrical 
and bizarre, fantastic and uncouth, which lay 
beneath, as one looks down through the thin 
water-line of a clear but stagnant pool and 
sees the fairy-like structures of an alien ele 
ment. 'To-night,' thought 1, 'we shall not 
slumber in that cistern.' It seemed to me 
[37] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



in that thin, bracing air, that we had wriggled 
to the surface like the larvae of mosquitoes, 
and, after incessantly gyrating up and down, 
had crawled clear and grown our wings in 
the drier medium. But even while thinking 
these things the sun slipped down behind the 
opposite hills, the mist thickened, a cold 
draught sucked around the side of the moun 
tain, and I heard Vinckers let out his breath 
with a shudder. I had noticed that each even 
ing we grew depressed as soon as the sun was 
gone. 

" 'What is the matter?' I asked. 

"<0h, God!' he shuddered. 'Don't you 
see that it is all getting yellow again a nasty, 
greenish yellow?' 

" 'Ou aye,' said MacFarlane, 'but it has 
been yellow all day!' 

"It had a yellowish tinge to me, Doctor, 
but I had tried to persuade myself that it was 
something in the spectrum of that equatorial 
sun and the vivid greens which filled the val 
ley. There was no denying that as the sun- 
I 38*] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



rays left the air the yellows came out with 
frightful intensity, and to my imagination it 
seemed as if we were cursed with the curse 
of Midas a curse because we had profaned 
the Malang-o-mor, except that it was not nec 
essary to touch a thing to turn it into gold. 
Of course, at that time I knew nothing of such 
things as xanthopsia, and my mind rebelled 
at aught of a superstitious character. The 
result was that I became worried and con 
fused like a dog listening at the receiver of 
a telephone to a sourceless voice. "With 
Vinckers and MacFarlane it was different; 
they were of the unimaginative type which 
goes at one leap from stubborn disbelief to 
frenzied superstition and just because 
everything was turning yellow they would 
not raise their voices above a whisper. 

* * We had practically nothing wherewith to 
camp; in fact, we had come to wan 
dering through that dream-country with 
only dream-needs the needs of an opium- 
eater or any other slave of the lamp. Of 
[39] 



THE MOUNTAIN' OF FEARS 



course, we had some of the fruit the stuff 
that grew on the Mountain of Fears I have 
never seen it anywhere else. We made a 
shelter and crept in to sleep. 

"I suppose that it was hot enough, but for 
a month we had dwelt in the steam-room of a 
Turkish bath. Being younger and stronger, I 
had given my poncho to Vinckers, who had 
felt the chill of the higher air. Perhaps it 
was this circumstance which brought me 
through the night with my reason, for the 
cold wakened me before that moment of low- 
ebbing vitality which comes between mid 
night and dawn. I awoke shivering, dew- 
damp with the terror of the night before, and 
as I lay there waiting I heard the other two 
twitching and muttering. I suppose that I 
should have awakened them. 

"The moonlight, which should have been 
clear on the mountain, was yellow as in the 
valley below; the moon was still high, and 
we lay in the shadow, but as I waited it 
passed the zenith and began its swift descent, 
T 40] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



and soon the lower rim was cut by the edge 
of our leafy roof. For an hour no sound 
had come from the others, no stir; they had 
lain like dead men; and in my abject nerve- 
lessness I was afraid to investigate, but 
waited until the moon should sink lower and 
look directly into the place. MacFarlane was 
nearest me, and as the moon sank lower the 
yellow light crept up his body, which was mo 
tionless, as if carved in stone. It reached a 
hand lying palm downward on his thigh, and 
I saw that the back glistened with moisture. 
The sharp, golden moon-ray crept higher, and 
I watched breathlessly for his face, my own 
still in the shadow. His straggling beard 
turned golden ; I saw his yellow teeth gleam 
ing, the bristling lips drawn up and the 
breath hissing between in quick gasps. 'He 
is having the nightmare,' I thought, and might 
have found courage to awaken him, but at 
that moment the light shone full in his face, 
and I saw that his eyes were wide open, fixed, 
staring, brimming with an anguish of dread 
[41] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



before which my soul shrank. He was star 
ing straight in front of him at Vinckers, who 
was stretched out at his side, and as I 
watched, the moonlight fell on his face and 
showed his eyes also wide open and staring 
straight into those of MacFarlane. 

"For perhaps five minutes five hours it 
seemed to me these two lay inert, stricken 
paralytic from dread, gazing each one into 
the crazed eyes of the other, motionless, 
soundless while I, watching from the 
shadow, saw the water trickle down their 
yellow faces in little, golden drops. Then, 
with a consciousness of the danger of this 
thing, I tried to break the spell and did ! 

" * Vinckers!' I croaked, and before the 
sound of my voice had died away Vinckers 
screamed a rasping, throat-splitting scream, 
straight into MacFarlane 's face. MacFar 
lane gurgled and his eyes opened and shut 
rapidly. Vinckers screamed again and at 
this something inside me which I was striv 
ing to hold in check, some irresistible impulse, 
[42] 



seemed suddenly to tear away and sweep 
my will before it at least, this is a nice way 
of putting it, Doctor " 

Into Leyden's voice there had crept again 
that biting mockery which was almost jaunty 
in tone. 

"It is so," he continued, "that one auto- 
analytic a student of psychology his own 
might refer to these subjective symptoms. 
The brutal stranger watching this phenome 
non would spell it in five letters P-A-N-I-C 
an elemental emotion which can be the source 
of much learned argumentation and stamp 
the lives out of women and little children 
and grab all of the lifeboats and has! Yet 
it is an emotion quite common to certain low 
types of humanity, the kind who do their 
thinking with their spinal cord and it is one 
of those lovely primitive, primordial, brutal, 
unregenerate and degraded emotions of which 
certain others of its type, such as ungoverned 
lust and anger and revenge, are much ad 
mired by many modern devotees, the bestial 
143] 



THE MOUNTAIN' OF FEABS 



primitive to my mind all of these things 
sweep together through the same sluice. ' ' 

There are no words which will convey the 
bitterness of Leyden's tone; mockery soared 
high in comparison. 

"B'r'r'rrgh! how I loathe all such unicel 
lular impulses in a man a finished animal 
product ! And that night on that mountain I 
yelped and howled in fear with those other 
two hairy animals and I think that we 
fought and bit and struggled, for the next 
morning we were masses of minor wounds. 
Yet so far had we harked back on the trail 
of our savage forbears, driven screaming be 
fore that primitive and degraded passion of 
fear, that none of us was badly hurt ! which 
was even more shameful. I suppose, Doctor, 
that our terror was too elemental and reason 
less to lead us to use weapons, whereas our 
limbs lacked the strength to enable us to kill 
each other with our naked hands ; so that, in 
stead of digging out each other's hearts with 
our finger-nails, we suffered most from skin- 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



scratches, upon which the flies settled. Ach ! 
I should like to say an obscene word, Doc 
tor ! Let 's smoke ! let 's have a drink ! 

"Oh, yes we all came away the next day. 
Nothing happened to us just as there was 
nothing to be afraid of. Please tell me that 
it was all due to a toxic action on the center 
of Fear that is what I tell myself and what 
a savant of Leipsic was good enough to tell 
me. Nevertheless, when I met MacFarlane 
in Sydney four years ago I crossed to the 
other side of the street and he looked once 
and then away. There are some things in a 
man's past difficult to face; most difficult in 
mine is that last night on the broad hip of 
the Mountain of Fears." 




OIL AND WATER 

E were skirting the Island of Mar- 
gherita, which belongs to Ven 
ezuela and produces pearls of 
small size but excellent quality. 
I was smoking an after-dinner 
cigar with Dr. Leyden, the collector, who 
earns his living by supplying museums and 
professors with specimens from the animal, 
vegetable, and mineral worlds. 

"Did you ever notice, Doctor," he asked, 
suddenly, "how African blood is curdled by 
being mixed with Anglo-Saxon ? ' ' 

"I had always thought," said I, "that 
African "blood mixes badly with any other." 

' ' No. With Latin blood it will combine like 
whisky and soda, but the Anglo-Saxon plasma 
exerts upon it an action like that of alcohol 
upon albumen " He paused and absently 

followed the course of a school of flying-fish 
,[46] 



OIL AND WATER 



that flickered suddenly from the swash along 
side and skittered away across the dancing 
waves. 

' ' What suggested this topic to your mind ! ' ' 
I asked, curiously, for we had been discussing 
the relative naval strength of Germany and 
the United States. 

"That island." He nodded toward Mar- 
gherita as it rose, rough in outline, but with 
the misty softness of distance, from the quiet, 
pink and purple sea. The sun was resting 
on the rim of the sky-line, and its late rays 
bathed the lavender slopes of the mountains, 
that rose in tumbling confusion, their sum 
mits blazing with high-lights and their feet 
already clothed in slanting shadows. 

Almost as we watched, the sun slipped 
under the sea ; a multi-colored breeze rippled 
the face of the water ; opalescent flashes spar 
kled here and there from the sails of the little 
Portuguese men-of-war, and then the day 
light began to wane, as it seemed, in rhythmic 
beats. 

:[ 47 ] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEAES 



"Odd," continued Leyden, clinging with 
Teutonic persistency to his theory, conscious 
but unaffected by his exquisite surroundings. 
1 ' The popular idea is that an individual hav 
ing a drop of African blood is more negro than 
white, even though the white predominates, 
as in the case of a quadroon or octoroon. This 
is wrong, Doctor. The white is by far the 
more potent strain, but, because it is more apt 
to color the mind than the skin, it is not recog 
nized as such. ' ' 

"Primitive organizations are usually more 
virile, ' ' I began. 

"It is not of the physical but of the mental 
that I speak?" he interrupted, a bit testily. 
"It is an undeserved compliment to the negro 
and an unjust insult to the white to claim that 
a man having an equal amount of both strains 
is more black than white, but if the white 
strain is Anglo-Saxon or Scandinavian, then 
he is both white and black, and all of each, 
for they will mix no more than oil and 
water." 

1*81 



OIL AND WATEE 



He was silent again, and I waited, for I 
knew that he would presently back his theory 
by an illustration. 

"You know Margherita ? " I asked, pres 
ently, to help him get under way. 

"Better than is necessary," he replied, and 
was silent again. The swift tropic twilight 
had almost faded ; the slopes of the mountains 
were somber with mysterious shadows; a 
huge cumulus cloud, still crimson about its 
edges, was stranded on the highest peaks, and 
above it a dainty crescent moon was swiftly 
growing brighter. 

' * Let us go aft, ' ' muttered Leyden. ' ' These 
cattle make too much noise !" 

He was quite right, for that part of the 
deck was infested by our fellow-passengers ; 
the Venezuelans were chattering like a band 
of apes; naked babies lived and moved and 
had thek unclean little beings where they 
listed ; near us a British engineer was arguing 
in Spanish with a German coffee planter, and 
behind him an Austrian Jew who had been 
149] 



THE MOUNTAIN' OF FEARS 



buying pearls in Margherita was showing his 
wares to the wife of a Dutch officer returning 
to Curasao from a visit to relatives in Suri 
nam, and the two were chattering away in 
voluble French. Our captain, a fine specimen 
of a Hollander, was playing chess with an 
Italian, and the latter was winning, having no 
ship on the coast and his brain unfilled with 
plans regarding the securing of a cargo for 
Havre or Amsterdam. Through the crowd 
came a stolid Dutch quartermaster, picking 
his way along the deck to read the taffrail- 
log, which he did, and returned oblivious to 
all but the number in his head, as I could see 
from the moving of his lips as he muttered 
it over to himself. 

Leyden led the way aft to the grating be 
side the hand steering-gear the place where 
we usually held our sessions of swapping ex 
periences. I drew out a fresh cigar and the 
German lit his big porcelain pipe, an appa 
ratus especially adapted to the needs of the 

raconteur, as one could take a puff or two and 
[50] 



OIL AND WATER 



then bank the fire until the next stopping- 
place. 

"It was several years ago," he began. "I 
had been sent up the Orinoco by an American 
university, a new one in the Middle West, to 
which some sausage-maker had given a for 
tune to build and stock a museum of natural 
history. The president of the university sent 
for me; I can never sufficiently admire the 
capability of this young man for his position. 
He took me into the museum and showed me 
at least a kilometer of empty shelves. 

11 'This place must be chock-a-block by 
commencement time,' said he. 'I have four 
men at work in North America, two in South 
America, four in Europe - ' and so on, all 
over the face of the earth. 'I wish you to 
take charge of South America, north of the 
Amazon. There is a man in the Amazon Val 
ley chasing up the fish and reptiles, and one 
in Peru, out for mammals. You are to get 
after the birds and insects ; of course, if you 
should happen to run across anything rare 
[51] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



that's not in your line just gather it in, 
anyway.' He glanced at some typewritten 
memoranda. 'That ought to give us an 
Al stock of South American goods, and 
before we get through if we don't have 
Putney University bluffed off the boards I'll 
go to h ' " 

Leyden paused, and I heard his china stove 
splutter as he laughed softly. 

"It was a good outfit, that of mine the 
best I have ever had. There were four large 
boats, with a crew of five men in each. As 
quantity was required as well as quality, I 
stocked up as if for a trading expedition. You 
know, Doctor, natives are themselves born 
collectors; moreover, an observant savage 
knows a rare thing when he sees it. I have 
had a large experience with aborigines and 
know the capriciousness of their tastes. The 
objects which one would expect to attract 
them they often positively refuse to look at, 
while for something else they are ready to do 
murder. If a man is fortunate enough to 
[52] 



OIL AND WATER 



strike a popular fancy lie can buy a whole 
tribe. And that is what I proposed to do. 

' * There was a friend of mine in New York, 
a German, who had traded on the Orinoco, 
and from him I formed some ideas in re 
gard to trade-stuffs, for, you see, it was my 
plan to subsidize some tribe and have them 
doing my collecting while I stopped in camp to 
pack and preserve specimens. Before leaving 
New York I went to one of the big wholesale 
'notion' stores on Broadway and explained 
my needs to the superintendent. The first 
thing which he showed me as a joke, I be 
lieve was a consignment of fawn-colored 
opera hats which had been made for some 
minstrel company which went into the hands 
of the receiver before the goods were deliv 
ered. They were light and folded compactly, 
and you know how savages delight in elabo 
rate head-gear. I bought three dozen for 
twenty dollars. Then I bought two dozen 
harmonicas and two dozen bright jew's-harps. 
Of course, I got the usual stock goods fish- 
[53] 



4ft =W 

THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 

hooks, calico prints, aniline dyes and finally 
the proprietor, who had a keen sense of hu 
mor, presented me with a case of four dozen 
old-fashioned iron spectacle frames which 
contained no glasses. As I wear spectacles 
myself, I decided that possibly I might set a 
fashion up in Orinoco, and accordingly took 
them along." 

Leyden paused to turn the forced draught 
on his tobacco crucible, and in the silence I 
caught odd snatches of conversation in at 
least five different tongues: "Tres pien 
marche tres pien marche/' came the gut 
tural voice of the pearl-buyer. "Cuanto por 
la picinia," from the Venezuelans, followed 
by a snigger of that peculiar note that goes 
with an improper anecdote ; a sort of falsetto 
giggle everyone knows the kind. Then 
the captain got checkmated, and swore a 
good, hearty Dutch oath that sounded 
strangely clean and honest and wholesome 
as compared to the staccato fragments on 
all sides. 

[54] 



46* ' ' ' ' 

OIL AND WATER 



"I had my outfit towed up as far as Ciudad 
Bolivar, ' ' Leyden continued. ' ' There I found 
a German named Meyers, who had a big trad 
ing station. He told me in confidence that he 
was planning to call in his loans, as far as 
he was able, and leave the country, as the ra 
pacity of the new government made it impos 
sible to carry on a profitable trade. He was 
a man of about fifty, unmarried, and had lived 
at least half of his life on the river. 

"It happened that my lieutenant, a young 
German 1 American named Lefferts, had con 
tracted the fever on the way up the river. 
He was the son of an old friend of mine in 
New York, and I had promised to take care 
of him. You have had some experience in 
tropical malaria, Doctor. Or perhaps it is 
not malaria; at any rate, one dies in rather 
an indecent hurry, and quinine is about as 
efficient as so much flour. I sent the lad back 
on the steamer and asked Meyers if he knew 
of any one with whom to replace him a 
white man, of course, as it is always well to 
[55] 



THE MOUNTAIN' OF FEARS 



have at least two white men when there are 
things to steal. 

"When I asked the question it seemed to 
me that Meyers' pale yellow face took on a 
more lifelike color. 

" 'There is a young man in my employ 
whom you might persuade to go,' said he. 'At 
present he is keeping the store. I will send 
for him but I beg of you not to say a word 
concerning what I have mentioned in regard 
to my returning to Germany.' 

* ' ' Certainly not, ' said I. Meyers gave an 
order to a servant, and a few minutes later I 
saw a broad-shouldered young fellow walking 
toward the house. Even before he came with 
in hail his striking resemblance to Meyers 
told me what he was. 

"Few men could have told that he was not 
a German born, and still fewer that African 
blood flowed through his veins, but my call 
ing is one which demands close powers of ob 
servation. His hair was of a light brown, 
straight, but utterly without lustre; his blue 
[56] 



OIL AND WATER 



eyes had a muddy tinge, and his skin, al 
though fair, had that peculiar purple tint of 
raw meat which one sees in blonds with Afri 
can corpuscles. 

"Meyers explained my needs, and the 
young man, whose name was Frederick, lis 
tened attentively, as I did also, for as the 
older man talked I became conscious of an 
odd accent of fear in his voice. Each time 
that his natural son turned his eyes in his 
direction Meyers would seem to recoil and his 
voice would grow faint and irresolute. It 
did not take me long to see that the trader 
was in mortal terror of his offspring. 

' 'Frederick listened, as it seemed to me, a 
bit sulkily, and once or twice gave Meyers a 
sidelong glance of suspicion, as if he was try 
ing to discover some ulterior motive which 
indeed was not lacking, as I very well knew 
that Meyers would not be there when I re 
turned, and I more than half suspected that 
Meyers would have left before had it not been 
for Frederick. 

[57] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



" 'What will you pay?' he asked, suddenly, 
turning to me. I told him. 

" 'It is not much,' he observed, in a surly 
voice. 

" 'I am not urging you to come,' I replied, 
quietly. ' There is the proposition ; take it or 
leave it.' 

" 'I will let you know in the morning,' said 
he, and left us with no salutation. 

"When he had gone Meyers turned to me 
with a weak and somewhat frightened smile. 

" 'I think that he will go,' said he. 'He is 
fond of money. Of course' he smiled in a 
way that made me want to kick him 'you 
understand the eh my position ' 

" ' No ' I answered a bit brutally, I fear 
'I don't. If you care enough about him to 
educate him as you appear to have done, why 
do you want to desert him?' 

"He shrank as if I had struck him, and for 

a moment seemed on the verge of collapse, 

then recovered and clapped his hands feebly. 

A yellow girl, in an unclean pinafore which 

[58] 



OIL AND WATER 



rather emphasized the nakedness beneath, 
flopped out of the house, holding her frock 
partly together with one hand, and asked 
what he wanted. 

" 'Schiedam and bitters and bring a 
water-monkey,' he answered. Eather to my 
surprise, the wench did as she was bid, favor 
ing me with a rather bold stare. 

' ' Itwas intensely hot just before the after 
noon shower. We were sitting on the raised 
veranda of Meyers' house, and down below 
us the river oozed along, viscid and brown 
and sticky-looking, like molasses flowing out 
of a stove-in vat. The clouds were banking 
up black and forbidding on the other side of 
the stream, and occasionally a rumble of thun 
der reached us. 

" 'You do not know do not understand,' 
said Meyers, finally. He raised one skinny, 
mottled hand to his red, untidy beard, which 
was getting gray around his muzzle, like an 
old collie, which, in fact, he somewhat resem 
bled. 'Of course, you see the relationship.' 
'[59] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



His fingers massaged his lips, a frequent ges 
ture with people of vacillating character. 'I 
was fond of him as a boy and flattered myself 
that his negro blood was in no way evident, 
though his mother was a mulatto but it was 
only in process of incubation; it has since 
shown itself not physically, but in more sin 
ister manifestations : in the workings of his 
mind.' He reached for his gin-and-bitters, 
slopping half of it down the front of his tunic. 
'My conscience demands that I should warn 
you,' he went on, after gulping down his gin 
and wiping his gray muzzle on his sleeve. 'He 
is intelligent, and when not crossed his dispo 
sition is cheerful and kind when not crossed, 
you observe, because it is when his resent 
ment is aroused that the black blood comes all 
to the surface. At such times he is a fiend 
incarnate but there is no reason why in your 
case any such condition should arise.' He 
glanced about him nervously, then hunched 
his chair closer to mine. * I will tell you some 
thing that you would never guess,' said he, 
[60] 



OIL AND WATER 



pushing his face toward mine until his gin- 
soaked bristles almost touched my cheek. 'At 
times' his voice dropped to a whisper 'at 
times I am actually in fear of him ! ' 

" 'Do you think that he will accept my 
offer?' I asked, leaning backward, for the 
man was getting momentarily more re 
pugnant to me. 

"B'r'r'gli!" Leyden arose suddenly and, 
walking to the taffrail, spat into the water. 
"I can see the fellow yet, Doctor," he said, 
turning to me apologetically. "He and his 
unhealthy, exotic surroundings, that were 
partly luxurious, partly rotten, like one of 
those beautiful carnivorous orchids with their 
wonderful tints and charnel-house odor 
mauve and carmine outside and inside full of 
decaying insects. Meyers was rich, and he 
had a fine house and a beautiful garden, and 
European delicacies, and books, and objets 
de vertu, but his setting was poisonous ! Man 
groves and fever and humid heat and when 
ever you went in and out of his place you 
[61] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



would catch a glimpse of slatternly, naif- 
naked native women poking and prying and 
getting out of the way. Then he would re 
ceive you in a limp, unbuttoned sort of a way 
you know the type. 

' ' He was of exceptionally good family and 
a man of highest education, but I fancied that 
he had pretty well degenerated " 

Eight bells were struck forward, and Ley- 
den paused to strike a match and hold it to 
the dial of the log. The Dutch captain came 
aft at the same moment and held the lighted 
end of his cigar against the dial. He paused 
to chat with us for a moment, then went for 
ward to see if the youthful mate on the bridge 
was still awake, for the strain of work is ter 
rific on the coast, and I doubt if the mates 
had averaged four hours ' sleep in the twenty- 
four for a week. 

"Frederick finally decided to accept my 

offer," Leyden went on, "and the next day 

we left Bolivar and proceeded up the river. 

I explained my project to Frederick, who told 

[62] 



OIL AND WATER 



me that he knew of a tribe located near the 
head of one of the tributaries of the Orinoco, 
whom he had once visited on a trading expedi 
tion, and, as I judged that the district should 
be rich in the material of which I was in 
search, I decided to visit it. 

"It was tedious working up that everlast 
ing stream; hot, too, for there was seldom a 
breeze, and sometimes it seemed to me that 
the dome of humidity rising from that slug 
gish river acted as a lens, or burning glass, to 
focus upon us the rays of that withering sun. 
My crews turned out well; a few had the 
fever, but what surprised me was that Fred 
erick seemed to suffer from the heat more 
than any of us. Yet he was a useful man a 
good driver, although it seemed to me at 
times that he was unnecessarily abusive. 

"Once we entered the tributary, the - , 
it was much better, for there we could keep 
in the shade of the great forest which rose 
right from the banks. I had already secured 
quite a number of specimens, and was alto- 
t[63] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



gether much satisfied by the way in which 
things were going. 

' ' One peculiarity of Frederick which I had 
several times noticed was his personal van 
ity, a trait which at times made him ridicu 
lous. I had observed the covetousness with 
which he regarded some of my personal ef 
fects, and had given him several trifles, 
among them a pair of bright yellow leather 
puttee-leggins, at which his delight was like 
that of a child. That was the African. The 
contraptions were too hot for me, too hot 
for anybody, but Frederick wore them con 
stantly. 

"I had not said much about my trading 
junk, thinking that he might regard me as a 
business rival, but one evening when we were 
encamped on the edge of the river I had the 
case of hats opened, as I had noticed the ants 
coming out of the crevices and wanted to see 
if the goods were damaged. I drew one of 
them out, punched it open, and was examin 
ing it, when I happened to glance at FreJer- 
[64] 



OIL AND WATER 



ick, who was standing near. His eyes were 
fairly bulging and his loose mouth agape. 

" '"Why have you those hats, Doctor 1 ?' he 
gasped, in astonishment. 

" 'Trading stuff,' I answered. 'Do you 
think that the natives will like them?' 

i i i rjij^ na ti ves t B u t they are far too good ! 
They are beautiful hats, such as gentlemen 
wear in the United States, are they not ? ' 

"I glanced at him curiously, and saw that 
he was looking at that hat as a starving man 
might look at a loaf of bread. Really, in spite 
of Meyers having given him what would be 
equal to a good high-school education, the 
man was simple as a savage, and he had never 
been away from the Orinoco. 

11 'You appear to admire them,' I an 
swered, carelessly; 'perhaps you might like 
one yourself. They are light, and should be 
cool.' 

' ' His eyes glistened ; he could hardly thank 
me, he was so pleased. I overhauled the lot 
until I found one that fitted him, and after 
[65] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



that he wore it constantly, to the great ad 
miration of the native crews. 

"A few days later we found the tribe, with 
whom I immediately opened negotiations. 
They were remarkably quick in learning what 
was required of them, and they were pleased 
with my goods. Especially they admired 
Frederick, who went about clad in bright yel 
low puttees, moleskin trousers, a white drill 
tunic with a military collar, and a fawn-col 
ored opera hat. It seemed to me that the 
elegance of his attire had some good effect, 
for he certainly had great authority with 
those red Indians more than I. 

1 ' Things went on swimmingly for a while ; 
the savages brought me in specimens of every 
desertion ; my packing cases were becoming 
filled, and it looked as if, where my part of 
it was concerned, Billings University might 
yet have Putney University 'bluffed off the 
boards. ' The interest of the natives had be 
gun to flag slightly, but I had refreshed it by 
serving out the harmonicas and jew's-harps 
[66] 



OIL AND WATER 



a step which I soon regretted, as my camp 
became a nightmare of sound. A fortnight 
later, business becoming slack again, I 
served out the opera hats, and whipped up 
their ardor still further by exhibiting the 
spectacle frames." 

Leyden paused and chuckled into his pipe 
until the sparks spouted from the big china 
bowl like a roman candle. 

4 'Imagine, Doctor, such a spectacle! I had 
brought a lot of mosquito netting pink, it 
was and with that I had shown the savages 
how to make insect nects. Such a sight! 
Forty or fifty Indians and bush-niggers, some 
naked except for a fawn-colored opera hat 
and a pair of iron spectacles without the 
lenses; others swathed in flaming calico 
prints, sitting around my camp blowing into 
a harmonica or a jew's-harp, or sneaking 
through the jungle with shrimp-pink butter 
fly net! The very crocodiles used to crawl 
out upon the banks and laugh ! And the na 
tives all so proud and pleased ! 
[67] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



"Then one day a few of them came in and 
said that they had trapped a maipuri a kind 
of water-tapir over on the other bank. I 
took a few men and went over to superintend 
the skinning of the beast, and while so en 
gaged two of the Indians came rushing up to 
say that a small steamer was coming up the 
river. 

"It turned out to be a little gunboat. 
Shortly after we left Bolivar there had been 
one of the semi-annual revolutions, and the 
new governor of the district, knowing that I 
had gone up the river, had come up to see 
what could be made out of me. The matter 
could have been arranged peaceably enough 
had it not been for Frederick. On sighting 
the steamer the fool had promptly armed the 
boat crews, and when the people from the 
gunboat landed near the camp they were con 
fronted by an array of twenty half-caste 
Caribs, armed with bored-out Springfields, 
and about two-score of Indians, gorgeously 
equipped with opera hats and spectacles, 
.[68] 



OIL AND WATER 



many of them blowing furiously into har 
monicas and all armed with bows and spears. 

' * Those Indians, as you know, are the most 
harmless people in the world, but the Caribs 
will fight, and from all I could learn, for I 
was across the river at the time, that fool of a 
Frederick went roaring about, making fren 
zied orations and challenging the Venezuelans 
to try to land. 

"They did land, and at the first volley 
Frederick rolled on his back, absolutely un 
hurt, and howled for mercy. The Caribs re 
treated firing, and managed to kill one of the 
people from the gunboat and wound three 
others. I started back the moment I heard 
the firing, but by that time my allies had been 
routed, and I was promptly arrested and put 
down below in double irons. 

"They confiscated all of my specimens, 
stowing them away on the gunboat, took the 
boats in tow and down the river we went, 
leaving the Indians and boatmen in the bush. 
All of my protests were vain ; I had been trad- 
I. 69 l 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



ing without a license from the government 
which did not exist when I went up in addi 
tion to which my people had fired upon gov 
ernment troops, killing a man and wounding 
others. No appeal to my consul would be per 
mitted ; I was no better than a pirate, etc. 

"Frederick was chained up near me on the 
trip down, and he alternated between raving 
curses at our captors and whimpering like a 
pup when they cuffed him for it. You see, 
Doctor, the alien strains were always at work 
in that man. One minute he was white, the 
next black. Your French or Spanish or Ital 
ian half-caste would have had the cunning 
that is one of the compensations of the mon 
grel; but Frederick was in two layers, and 
sometimes one would be on top and some 
times the other, but they never mixed. It 
was even so with his personal appearance, 
for I noticed that when he was in charge of 
our men he looked the typical German; his 
features were aquiline, composed, dignified 
and showed character. On the other hand, 
[70] 



OIL AND WATER 



when he was hurt or frightened the actual 
color of his skin was all that proclaimed him 
white. His eyes would bulge until the whites 
were visible all the way around, his forehead 
crept down, his nose would actually flatten 
and his lips rolled back in the typical African 
manner, showing their red linings and the big 
ivory teeth. 

"Before we had reached the mouth of the 
river he was moping in the usual negro way, 
and I think that he would have died, as ne 
groes will if their despondency lasts too long, 
had we been a week longer en voyage." 

Leyden ceased speaking and jerked his 
head irritably toward the fat Italian who had 
been playing chess with the captain. He had 
fallen asleep in his chair, and, being a large 
man, his head had rolled back over the cross 
bar. A shaft of light from the * ' rook learner" 
fell upon the expanse of pale, flabby throat, 
stretched tense by the weight of the pendant 
head, and as I glanced that way it vibrated 
with strangling, unwholesome noises. 
[71] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



"Humbert!" called Leyden, in a soft, femi 
nine voice, then quickly turned his back. The 
sodden mass convoluted; the noises culmi 
nated in a strangling snort ; one almost heard 
the vertebra creak as the strain came upon 
them ; then he sat up and stared about in be 
wilderment. 

" Nothing like the sound of one's name to 
wake one, especially in a strange place," 
chuckled Leyden, softly. "I saw on the pas 
senger list that his name was Humbert." 
He walked to the taffrail and leaned upon it 
for a moment, watching the glowing disks of 
phosphorescence whirled to the surface by 
the screw. They glowed and faded and then 
glowed again, to merge finally into a broad 
band of luminous silver that formed the wake. 

"They left my specimen cases at Bolivar," 
he resumed, talking to the rudder, appar 
ently, * ' and took us around to Cumana, where 
they lodged us in the nasty little jail which I 
will show you to-morrow, if we are permitted 
to land. After a month of it fever and 
[72] 



OIL AND WATER 



starvation and vermin" (he scratched his 
shoulder with a squirm) "I itch yet when 
I think of it after a month of all this I be 
came ennuye and decided to leave. ' ' His voice 
grew ominously hard. "So one evening I 
took Frederick and we came away. Frederick 
was at pretty low ebb by that time, and it took 
about three days' skillful jockeying to coax 
his German blood to the top; but eventually 
I got it there in sufficient volume to make me 
think that it would remain for an hour or two 
and it did! long enough to enable him to 
kill one of the devilish nigger guards with 
his naked hands. I crushed the skull of an 
other with a jagged piece of rock, and then 
we wandered down the beach, found a rotten 
old canoe and paddled out to sea. 

''The canoe was half waterlogged, and I 
knew that it would not carry us very far, so I 
decided to try and get to Margherita and take 
our chances on the rest. When the day 
broke I could just distinguish the outlines of 
the island, with the usual big cloud hanging 
[73] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



over it. ,We paddled all day long, without 
seeming to get any nearer; then Frederick 
grew sulky all at once and threw down his 
paddle with the remark that he was going to 
die. 

" 'You certainly will,' said I, ' unless you 
keep at work/ I had filled a water- jug that 
I found in the canoe before we started, but 
we had nothing to eat since afternoon of the 
day before, and what we got then was not of 
a tissue-building character. 

" *I am going to die,' Frederick repeated 
and then, confound him, he lay down in the 
bottom of the canoe and did die ! ' ' 

I grunted for that seemed to me to be an 
adequate epitaph for such a person as I fan 
cied Frederick to have been. 

"I did not discover it at once," Leyden 
went on, "but when I did I was rather re 
lieved, as it is harder to share one's nerve 
with another man than one's food. I slid 
him over the side of the canoe and kept on 
with my paddling. Really, Doctor, that day 
[74] 



OIL AND WATER 



is an absolute blank. About sunset I struck 
some of the outlying boats of the pearl divers 
and the next thing that I remember is waking 
up and finding myself lying in a nasty little 
hut covered with flies. I think that it was the 
smell of the shell-heaps on the beach that 
brought me to life again. But it was odd 
about that man Frederick, was it not? and 
rather illustrates my theory, don't you 
think?" 

' ' Never mind your theory, ' ' said I. ' l Tell 
me the rest of the story." 

' * That was rather odd, too. ' ' Leyden per 
mitted himself a few reminiscent puffs. * * The 
chap that rescued me was a French Jew who 
controlled quite a bit of the pearl-fishing in 
dustry on the island. He was clever enough 
to guess how I came to be floating about in 
that hollow log, but made no comment at the 
time. As soon as I was able to get about 
again, which was in a couple of days, he asked 
me if I wished to work for him. I declined 
with thanks, whereupon he said that in that 
1751 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



case he felt that duty would compel his hand 
ing me over to the authorities. Practically, 
you see, I was his slave, but there seemed no 
help for it, so for the time being I took com 
mand of one of his larger boats and her crew. 
He gave me some clothes and my food and 
that was all. 

"In the end I got even. One day, when I 
had landed my cargo of oysters on the beach 
and was about to begin opening for you 
know the pearl fishers down here open the 
shells instead of rotting out, as they do in the 
East an old native woman who had been 
squatting near the edge of the pile hobbled 
over to where I was standing and begged for 
one of the bivalves to eat. They are not bad, 
you know. I told her to help herself, expect 
ing, naturally, that she would pick one up at 
her feet ; but instead of that she went around 
to the other side of the heap and selected one 
there. This struck me as a bit odd ; then, as 
she hobbled off, it seemed to me that she was 
in some haste to get away. Acting entirely 
[76] 



OIL AND WATER 



upon impulse, and with no distinct idea of my 
motive, I picked up a couple of the oysters 
and ran after her. 

" 'Here, mother,' said I, 'take these and 
give me that one which you have there. ' 

' ' She favored me with a look which actually 
reeked with malice, but, as there was no help 
for it, handed over the oyster. As I took it I 
saw my employer or jailer, to be accurate 
walking down the beach from his cabin for 
he always superintended the opening of the 
shells, for very obvious reasons, and I had 
orders never to begin the work until his ar 
rival. He was still some distance off, so, 
turning my back to him, I whipped out my 
knife and slit open the mollusk, and there, 
right on the very lip, was the largest pearl 
which I have ever seen on Margherita ! 

"You see, Doctor, when the oysters are 
thrown down on the beach the heat from the 
sun and the hot sand often causes them to 
open an inch or so. This old woman, who had 
come down, no doubt, with the purpose of 
[77] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



begging an oyster to eat, was squatting in 
front of this especial one, and caught sight of 
the pearl through the slit between the two 
shells." 

Leyden turned to me suddenly. "What 
would you have done in such a case, Doctor?" 

"Exactly what you did, I fancy," I an 
swered. 

"Yes," he replied, slowly; "I was justified. 
This Frenchman was detaining me through 
blackmail and forcing me to work like a dog 
for fear of being turned over to the Venezue 
lans. I kept the pearl and a week later man 
aged to escape to Curasao on a schooner. 
There I sold my pearl for eight hundred 
dollars, and as soon as I had the money I 
wrote to the gentleman who had broken up 
my expedition and offered him five hundred 
dollars for all my effects delivered to me at 
Curasao. They came on the next Dutch 
steamer and were handed over to me by the 
captain upon my payment of the money. 

Three weeks later they were gracing the 
[78] 



OIL AND WATER 



shelves of the new museum of Billings Uni 
versity and I was on my way to Mexico to 
collect Aztec relics for the same excellent in 
stitution." 



[79] 




THE SHEARS OF ATEOPOS 

ILL you please tell me why it is, 
Doctor," said Leyden, "that 
when you and I are foregathered 
in this part of the ship at this 
hour of the evening we must im 
mediately proceed to rake the lockers of our 
recollection for the morbid and anomalous ? ' ' 
I told him that it was perhaps because the 
accent of a man's mind was largely influenced 
by his profession, and that as the morbid was 
my source of livelihood and his the rare and 
sui generis of Nature, our interests touched 
these topics. 

" Ach! there is something in that," said 
Leyden, "but not all. It is that only in these 
violent upheavals do we get to see the hidden 
things of life, the more superficial of which 
are evident to a man who can translate the 
[80] 



THE SHEARS OF ATROPOS 



languages of his five senses and has perhaps 
a dialect or two in reserve." 

He was silent for a moment, letting his 
steady gray eyes rest upon the streaks of 
phosphorescent spume churned up about us 
by the stiff following trade. Abeam lay the 
moonlit isle of Curasao, so near that one 
could see the towering yuccas standing senti 
nels upon the ridges of the broken hills 
could almost see the yellow of their blossoms, 
for this moon gave color as well as perspec 
tive. 

"This was in Borneo, Doctor," he began 
abruptly. "I had been sent there on a head 
hunting expedition. Odd, is it not, but appro 
priate ! A countryman of mine who was writ 
ing a book on anthropology had sent me there 
to take photographs and notes and measure 
ments and to collect specimens of skulls as I 
saw fit attached or unattached, that was my 
lookout. You know, Doctor, that although the 
coast of Borneo is occupied by Malays, Ba- 
jaus, or Sea Gypsies, Bugis, Chinese and im- 
[81] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



migrants from Polynesia, very little is known 
of the interior, which is the exclusive domain 
of the great family of Dyaks, which is itself 
divided into several tribes. It was of the 
Punan and Olo-ot, who are fairly pure, that 
my employer wanted specious information. 

"I had taken with me one white man, oddly 
enough a tourist, a New York lawyer named 
Lynch, whom I had met in Singapore a gen 
tleman who had inherited a little money and 
was taking a trip around the world. A great 
explorer was lost in that man, Doctor and 
there are too many good lawyers already. 

"As a rule, I prefer to go into a savage 
country with no other white man, as once 'or 
twice it has been my misfortune to have all 
of my work undone by the single careless or 
tactless act of a companion; in the present 
case I needed an assistant, as I had just come 
down from the Irawady and was running a 
temperature which I thought possible the hills 
of Borneo might develop into a sharp attack 
of fever. 

I 88 !, 



THE SHEARS OF ATROPOS 



"I will not attempt to describe our adven 
tures, nor what we found inside the island, for 
all of that you can read in my patron's book. 
Eventually we struck the head of a river 
which, according to my reckoning, would take 
us down to a little trading port called Ban- 
gan, and I had learned from a few friendly 
natives that there was a missionary station 
not far below us. I had not known that there 
were any missionaries in that section; but 
then, they are universal perennials which one 
is apt to encounter anywhere. 

"We slipped down this rapid stream, and 
late upon the third day, as we turned into a 
long reach of the river, saw a clearing at the 
other end. I was heartily glad, for my fever, 
which had developed, as I feared, did not 
yield to medication as it should, and. to tell 
the truth, Doctor, I did not really believe that 
I would reach sea-water alive. Lynch was in 
perfect condition hard, seasoned, alert but 
then, you see, he was not chock full of Ira- 
wady microbes when we started, and the coun- 
[83] 



THE MOUNTAIN' OF FEARS 



try through which we had passed was not un 
healthy. 

"He had been of the greatest value to me; 
three times I owed my life to him that trip. 
Often he made me laugh by the ease with 
which he adapted his ultra-modernism to his 
primitive surroundings, for he was not a man 
who was used to roughing it. He treated our 
half -wild Dyaks as if they were the bellboys 
of his club ; appeared to have not the slightest 
notion in the world that they could so far for 
get their manners as to become insubordi 
nate; would sometimes relax and joke with 
them a bit. He would turn his back upon the 
most dangerous, sleep with both eyes appar 
ently shut, seemed contemptuous of danger 
or treachery; yet the twice that it did occur 
he had anticipated it. Between us we were 
an efficient combination, for I am governed 
by instinct, Doctor; Lynch acted only from 
coldly wrought logic. 

' * To continue : We arrived at this clearing 

and were surprised to find near the edge of 

[84] 



THE SHEARS OF ATROPOS 



the bank a new stockade; the gum was still 
oozing from the stakes. To the right were 
some long, low buildings, of which I did not 
like the look. These also were very new in 
fact, still in process of construction and as 
I examined them through my glass I discov 
ered some bungling contrivances hanging 
from a projecting rafter. 

' ' * Neck-yokes, ' said I to Lynch. ' We have 
stumbled on a slaver!' 

" 'Here 'comes a white man,' he replied. 
There were a few natives watching us from 
the top of the bank, and through these there 
came a man of huge stature, with a rough, red 
beard and dressed in a suit of embroidered 
silk pajamas. The people wilted away from 
him as he approached, then fell in behind, 
walking with the curious drop-kneed gait of 
bush-folk the world over when ill at ease. 
This giant strode to the edge of the bank and 
stood glaring down without a word. 

" 'Good evening,' observed Lynch, and 
shoved the canoe to the bank. 
[85] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



" '.Where are ye from?' said the fellow, 
with a rough Caledonian accent, and staring 
down with his red beard thrust out and his 
small, pale eyes watching us suspiciously. 
His sleeves were rolled up to the elbow and 
his huge forearms, covered with shaggy hair, 
were folded across his bulging chest. 

" 'From the other side of the island,' said 
Lynch. He stepped out on the bank as if he 
had been invited and proceeded to moor the 
canoe. 

" 'What's this ye 're doin'f ' growled the 
red-bearded giant above him. His great arms 
had dropped to his side and one could see 
how the thick muscles held them with bent 
elbows. 

' ' ' Hitching the boat, ' replied Lynch, indif 
ferently. He did so, and walked to the top of 
the bank. 

" 'Whose house is that?' he asked. 

" 'The hoos is mine,' growled the man, 
and 't is no tavern I'm keepin' d'ye see!' 

' ' ' Oh, I quite understand that, ' said Lynch, 
[86] 



THE SHEARS OF ATROPOS 



pleasantly. 'Of course, you wish us to be 
3 7 our guests.' He turned to me. ' Doctor, 'he 
said, 'this gentleman wishes us to stop the 
night with him.' He turned to the other. 
'Very decent of you, I'm sure, especially as 
my friend has a touch of the fever and ought 
to rest up a bit. ' He proceeded to direct the 
unloading of the canoes, even calling some of 
the red man's retainers to assist. 

"The face of the fellow was purple, but it 
seemed as if Lynch 's assurance had robbed 
him of speech. He stood glowering like a 
great Guernsey bull, while Lynch went back 
and forth about him as if he had been an ob 
structing tree. 

" 'You see, we are naturalists,' Lynch be 
gan, talking as he worked. 'Some of these 
boxes contain trade-stuffs, but most of them 
are full of heads skulls, you know, very in 
teresting I will show you some if you like. 
I suppose your people are honest? I fancy 
this stuff will be safe right here where it is. 
Hi ! ' he relapsed into the dialect, and before 
[87] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



I knew what was going on two of the boys 
had me up the bank. 

" 'Permit me to introduce Dr. Leyden; I 
am Mr. Lynch,' said this extraordinary lieu 
tenant of mine ; * and now, sir, if you will lead 
the way ' 

" 'Ye 're takin' a deal for granted,' began 
the man in a surly voice. 

" 'I'm taking it for granted that you are 
the missionary,' said Lynch, calmly. 'If you 
are not, it really makes no difference. No 
white man could help being glad to accom 
modate two other white men in a place like 
this, and, although you do not keep a tavern, 
perhaps we can render you some service in 
return for your hospitality. We have more 
firearms than we will need ' 

" ' Ye 're verra kind, ' growled the man, but 
I saw his pale, swinish eye lighten a bit, and 
guessed that Lynch, with his usual tact, had 
touched him. 'Of course, I'll gie ye a lodgin' 
for the night, though I've little to offer stran 
gers.' He walked sullenly ahead, Lynch fol- 
[88] 



THE SHEARS OF ATROPOS 



lowing him, and I noticed that, although my 
companion was a tall, well-built man, the 
other topped him by half a head and the 
breadth of a hand across the shoulders. I do 
not think that I have ever seen a more power 
ful brute all bone and muscle, and something 
in the shiftiness of his pale, cunning eye told 
me that he was not without a corresponding 
share of guile. 

"As we drew near to the stockade I saw 
that -it was quite new, and then Lynch reached 
behind him and pinched my foot as I lay on 
the stretcher, and, would you believe it, 
Doctor, on every sharpened stake that 
formed the front of the stockade there was 
a human head! They had been there vary 
ing lengths of time, I judged, but the 
eh evidences of the recency of some were 
quite apparent. 

' l 1 1 see that you go in for heads a bit your 
self, Mr. Cullen, ' said Lynch, in his pleasant 
voice, but hardly was the name between his 
lips when this hairy giant of ours wheeled on 
[89] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



him like a boar. You know the stiff , muscle- 
bound motion, Doctor: the swift sling of the 
rigid body all on one axis, the great, brutish 
head swung on its thick neck, the mean little 
eyes slanting up evilly. That is what this 
hairy brute was, a boar, with all of the cun 
ning and surly moroseness of this animal. 
There was something horribly brutish in the 
swing of his shock head between the hulking 
shoulders as he turned on Lynch, and some 
thing horribly sinister in the yellow glint of 
his teeth between the bristling, red mustache, 
which seemed to roll upwards like that which 
one sees on the headpieces of ancient Japa 
nese armor. If he had turned to me like that 
I would have presented him with the muzzle 
of my pistol AchI and very possibly the 
bullet as well, for the secret of long life in my 
profession is to take no chances. I could not 
see, however, that Lynch moved a muscle, ex 
cept to smile. 

11 'Where got ye that name?' snarled the 
man. His beard was thrust almost into 
[90] 



THE SHEARS OF ATROPOS 



Lynch 's face, and I could see the twitching of 
his thick fingers. 

" 'On the collar of your pajamas,' said 
Lynch, calmly. 'Do you observe, Doctor,' he 
continued, turning to me, 'that some of these 
skulls are quite different from any we have 
secured f Possibly our host might be willing 
to exchange ' He turned to survey the ex 
hibit with interest. 'What a Golconda it is, 
to be sure!' cried my New York lawyer, en 
thusiastically. 'You are to be complimented 
on your collection, Mr. eh eh ' 

" 'McAdoo,' supplied the red man, sulkily, 
but with a strange quaver in his voice. I 
glanced up at him quickly, then looked away 
and at the stockade, for the glimpse I had of 
his face told me that the burly ruffian had re 
ceived a fright. He could not have been pale, 
even if he had been dead, but there was a look 
in his eyes that meant fear, yes, and meant 
murder, too, for a beast of that sort cannot 
become frightened without becoming homi 
cidal at the same time. 

[91] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEAES 



" 'Ye 're very obsairvinV he managed to 
say, in a thick voice. 

Lynch turned and regarded him benevo 
lently. 

" 'You are very modest, Mr. McAdoo,' he 
replied, genially. 'You really have a note 
worthy collection here. * 

" 'They were folk not wanted here,' re 
torted McAdoo, with what I could see was a 
considerable effort. And then he gathered 
himself together for a supreme stroke the 
one heavily delivered blow of this round ; and 
yet, do you know, Doctor, in spite of the man's 
overwhelming physical force and ominous as 
pect, there was something rather ridiculous 
in his manner of delivering this last menace 
something of the lout of a schoolboy who de 
fies his pedagogue, although he half believes 
that there may be a thrashing behind it ; de 
fies him because his nature is too churlish and 
too abundant in a swinish sort of courage, 
born of the sense of a potent vitality, to feel 
the fear of the result, appreciable to a crea- 
[92] 



THE SHEARS OF ATROPOS 



ture of the same courage but a higher power 
of imagination. 

11 'Maybe ye'd like to add to this same col 
lection, ' he said, and he said it with one men 
tal arm raised toward, in a manner of speak 
ing. 

"Lynch laughed outright. It might have 
been a part of his what you Americans call 
bluff, but I believe that it was sheer amuse 
ment. I began to be convinced that Lynch 
possessed a very keen sense of a very dan 
gerous sort of humor. He saw the thing just 
as I saw it; of course he would see it so, be 
cause, although I was a trifle slow in discov 
ering it, he had put this man 'HcAdoo' on 
the witness stand the very moment he heard 
him speak, and he was cross-examining him 
and deriving infinite amusement from the 
process. Moreover, McAdoo himself, while 
too coarse-grained to understand it, was be 
ginning to feel it, and there grew to be in 
his manoeuvres something of the sweating 
nervousness of a horse at the howl of 
[93] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



a far-distant wolf; yet his ears were well 
back. 

" 'That's just exactly what we want to do, 
McAdoo, ' he answered, and it almost seemed 
as if he was going to pat the ruffian on the 
shoulder, 'but we want to take a head or so 
in return. ' He smiled genially into the wicked 
face, and actually turned Ms back upon the 
man and walked in through the gate as if en 
tering the compound of an old friend. Per 
haps something told him that I had a hand 
on the butt of my revolver. 

''Once inside the stockade Lynch pushed 
matters ; in fact, he carried it to the verge of 
spoiling everything; but, you see, Doctor, if 
this McAdoo had possessed the wit of a 
cockroach, or had been a little more lacking 
in that hereditary feudal instinct which made 
him uncomfortable in spite of himself in the 
presence of a gentleman, he might easily have 
slipped away and arranged our assassination, 
and this was precisely what Lynch did not 
intend that he should do. He told me after- 
[94] 



THE SHEAES OF ATROPOS 



wards that, like J avert in 'Les Miserables,' 
he was born with an instinct for a criminal, 
but I do not credit this particularly, as I my 
self could deduct that this man McAdoo had 
more reason than mere surliness of disposi 
tion for not wishing us to stop at the mission- 
house. You see, it had to be a mission ; it was 
either that or a fort ; there was nothing there 
for which to trade. 

"All of this had entered my mind, just 
as it had Lynch 's; but, although apparently 
careless, Lynch was in reality a painstaking 
man. 

' ' We had entered the stockade, an enclosure 
of some size, in the middle of which stood a 
bungalow, which had once been pretty and 
which was evidently far older than the struc 
ture surrounding it. There was not a soul in 
sight, yet one had the feeling of furtive eyes 
peering from behind slanted jalousies. Lynch 
looked about him critically. 

" 'Quite like an Australian ranch-house, is 
it not, Doctor?' he remarked; then turned 
.[95] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



sharply to our host. ' Have you ever been in 
Australia, friend McAdoo?' 

"One could see the man's heavy jowl drop 
a trifle beneath his coarse, red beard ; his face 
looked flaccid just for the second, and then 
the blood came pouring back until the veins 
across the side of his forehead became dis 
tended. His pale, little eyes began to dance, 
just as those of a hog when he is about to 
make a rush you know the look. 

" 'Where is Mr. Cullen the missionary!' 
asked Lynch, sharply, and at this direct ques 
tion the congestion of McAdoo 's face faded 
in blotches and the glitter of his eyes changed 
to a gleam of cunning. 

" 'He's gone away, leavin' me in charge o* 
the station, and now if ye '11 kindly step in 
side' the brute actually mustered a sort of 
grin which was, no doubt, intended for an ex 
pression of good- will 'I'll leave ye for a 
minute or two.' 

' ' ' Thank you, ' said Lynch, calmly. * Doctor 
Leyden will wait here on the veranda, but I 
[96] 



THE SHEARS OF ATROPOS 



believe that I will go with you, if you don't 
mind. I should like to look around a bit. ' 

" 'There's little enough to see,' growled 
McAdoo, but his tone was growing wary. 'I'll 
ask ye to bide here for a bit.' 

" 'Thanks,' said Lynch, and there was ac 
tually a sing-song tone of sarcastic ennui in 
his voice, 'but I've conceived such a fondness 
for your society that I really can't bear to 
have you out of my sight, friend McAdoo. 
We'll go together; the Doctor does not mind 
being left alone. ' 

* ' This to that desperado whom we both be 
lieved to be an escaped Australian convict, 
whose presence in the mission-house was still 
to be explained. Lynch was armed, of course 
armed with one of the big revolvers your 
cowboys carry, and, in fact, he had been a 
plainsman for a while after leaving college, 
and I knew that, for all his languid air, if Mc 
Adoo laid a hand on the butt of either of the 
two revolvers which he carried he would be a 
dead man before the weapon was half -drawn, 
[97] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEAKS 



for Lynch was a master of your Western 
American art of lightning extermination. It 
did not seem to me, however, that this would 
help matters much, as I had seen that the man 
kept a swarm of Malays about him ; and Ma 
lays, even when ill-treated, are apt to be faith 
ful brutes, if the master who ill-treats them 
inspires their respect, as no doubt McAdoo 
must, or he would have been dead long before. 

"McAdoo did not permit himself another 
exhibition of badly suppressed rage; the situa 
tion was growing too serious for such petty 
self-indulgence. Instead, he assumed an air 
of awkward good-nature, which was far more 
sinister. 

" 'Please yourself,' said he, and walked 
away toward the gate, with Lynch walking at 
his side; this time, however, I observed that 
my companion went out last. 

""When they had disappeared I entered the 
silent house. My fever would not mount until 
late in the evening, and in the mean 
time, though very weak, I was able to 
[98] 



THE SHEABS OF ATROPOS 



get about. I went into the first room, 
which appeared to be a library and living- 
room. I had been in hundreds of such rooms 
in mission-houses the world over. The same 
classic pictures, the same neat rows of classic 
and unread books, and the same little heaps 
of much-read periodicals from 'home.' Then 
there were the local curios draped over the 
photographs of smug-faced relatives. Every 
thing was in perfect order; there had been 
little traffic in that room since the departure 
of the former occupants. 

"I passed from that to a room beyond, 
which I saw at a glance had been the mission 
ary's study. There was here the same hushed 
waiting. One of the drawers was half-opened 
and there was a sharp line of dust across the 
papers within. There was a native-made 
waste-basket, half-filled, and on top was an 
envelope with an English stamp addressed to 
'Rev. R. M. Cullen.' 

"A man of method, as the order of his ef 
fects proclaimed him to be, would never have 
[99] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



left his house without putting away his per 
sonal effects, Doctor, so I decided to rum 
mage. I knew that missionaries invariably 
kept journals, for the sake of subsequent writ 
ing, if nothing else. I reasoned that this diary 
would be in the desk, probably under lock and 
key, so I tried the different drawers and 
found one of them locked. When I had pried 
it open with my hunting knife I found the 
journal. ' ' 

Leyden paused to light a fresh cigar, which 
I knew would go out after the first three puffs. 
Some of the smoke must have found its way 
into his trachea, for he coughed once or twice 
before proceeding. 

"I am a hardened old campaigner, Doctor, 
and I have never had much sympathy with 
missionaries, who have usually impressed me 
as inspired asses, but I will confess that as I 
read the poor chap's journal my throat 
swelled until it was difficult to swallow. Per 
haps it was because I was weakened by my 
fever ; at any rate, I must confess that when 
.[100] 



THE SHEAES OF ATROPOS 



I had finished it the tears were pouring down 
my face. It was the record of a Christian 
hero, Doctor, a Christian martyr as well, as 
I discovered on reading the record of the last 
four days. 

" First, there had been three in the family 
the missionary, his wife and a daughter, who, 
as I read on, I discovered to be a deaf-mute. 
Within the last year the wife had died, and 
not long after her death McAdoo had come 
up the river, 'prospecting/ as he said. At 
this time the missionary was planning to re 
turn to England. 

"McAdoo had remained a month with the 
missionary, during which time their relations 
had grown ' somewhat strained. ' He had then 
departed, as Mr. Cullen hoped, for good, but 
only a fortnight before our arrival, Doctor, 
he had returned with the news that there was 
a trading schooner at the mouth of the river, 
and that the captain had agreed to give Mr. 
Cullen and his daughter a passage to Batavia, 
whence they could take a steamer to Amster- 
[ 101 ] 



THE MOUNTAIN 1 OF FEARS 



dam. McAdoo kindly offered to assume 
charge of the mission until he should hear 
from Mr. Cullen. In the meantime, however, 
the missionary had decided to remain, at hear 
ing which McAdoo 'was unable to conceal his 
disappointment ! ' 

"The following day McAdoo came to Mr. 
Cullen and advised him to leave, saying that 
he feared there was a plot among the natives 
to kill him. Mr. Cullen scoffed at these fears. 
The day after that he had a quarrel with Mc 
Adoo and ordered him to leave the premises 
finally. The last words in the diary were: 
'To my intense relief the man McAdoo has 
gone down the river, and I pray that I may 
never see his wicked face again!' 

"So much for the efficacy of prayer! I 
arose quickly, shoved the diary in my pocket 
and made for the rear of the house. I passed 
through what had been the dining-room on 
my way Ach! that was where the swine 
had nested! Something superstition, dis 
taste j I do not know what had kept him 

i 102 1 



THE SHEARS OF ATROPOS 



away from the more intimate retreats of Ms 
victim; but the dining-room I have seen 
more cleanly barracoons ! 

" Bustlings had preceded me as I had 
moved through the house ; they do in Oriental 
houses, you know, Doctor, just as they do in 
the forest, wherever furtive beings hold their 
existence. Now, I moved too rapidly for these 
rustlings, and in the kitchen I flushed some 
frightened Dyak servants three women and 
an old man. 

' ' ' Take me to your mistress, ' I said to one 
of the women, and I said it kindly, but I do 
think I have never seen more fright on a 
woman's face. After all, Doctor, to witness 
the horror of some one else is far more grue 
some than the thing itself, is it not?" 

I thought of the look I had once seen in the 
eyes of a man whose shoulder had been car 
ried away by a piece of shrapnel, as he had 
glanced down and seen his wound. 

' * Nothing is more contagious than dread, ' ' 
I murmured. 

[103] 



THE MOUNTAIN' OF FEARS 



"So I discovered a few moments later," 
muttered Leyden. ' * The woman led me to a 
hut a hundred yards behind the bungalow a 
well-furnished hut ; I think it may have been 
the mission hospital and there I found the 
daughter, the deaf-mute " 

Leyden 's voice had dropped until it was al 
most inaudible. I could not see his face in the 
dark, but I shivered. 

' * Of course, ' ' he went on, in a careless sort 
of way, "I could talk with her, for, although 
my ten modern languages and some twenty 
dialects all are spoken with the mouth, there 
is one dialect which is universal and that is 
spoken with the eyes. We had a little con 
versation in this tongue, and then I sat down 
beside her and patted her hands and made her 
actually smile. They are simple folk those 
on whom the hand of God has been heavy in 
this regard. Perhaps they are above these 
mundane things but at the time I did not 
look at it in this way. Instead I went back to 
the bungalow and waited in some impatience 
[104] 



THE SHEAKS OF ATROPOS 



for the return of Lynch and McAdoo and, 
will you believe it, Doctor just at this time, 
when I needed myself the most, these ac 
cursed plasmodia malaria, or whatever kind 
of species of fission-fungi it may be, began to 
start their segmentation, and segregation, 
and proliferation in my blood vessels, and I 
could feel the delirium creeping up my spine 
to my brain, just as some poor devil of a Pas- 
samaquoddy might have felt the fifty-foot rise 
of the Fundy tide creeping up his spine when 
some coterie of tribal enemies had staked him 
out on the flats at low water except that in 
his case it was cold and in mine it was red- 
hot! 

"I had not long to wait, however. Back 
they came, McAdoo sullen but studious, and 
Lynch smiling and talking as if he were the 
honored guest. I noticed that his holster was 
unbuckled, however, and while he had been 
away I had entertained no fears for his safety 
because, you see, I had heard no shot. Our 
co-operation was really quite admirable ! 
[105] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEABS 



" 'Lynch,' said I, and it seemed to me as if 
my voice came from a very great distance 
the fever, Doctor, not emotion, I beg you to 
believe; I was never more composed men 
tally in my life. ' Lynch, ' said I, ' will you and 
Mr. McAdoo kindly come into the library 
there are some matters which I wish to dis 
cuss with you both/ It was growing dark 
then, so I clapped my hands, quite softly, but 
a servant flittered out of the shadow like a 
bat. The tension was high in that bungalow 
that night. 

* ' * Bring lights, ' I said in the vernacular. 
" 'And foodl' suggested Lynch. 

* * ' The food can wait, ' I muttered, fighting 
hard against the inclination to sleep to 
drowse to be let alone, to enjoy my intoxica 
tion in peace. ' Come into the parlor ! ' I said, 
and Lynch told me afterwards that my man 
ner was as snappish as a dog with distemper. 

11 'After you, friend McAdoo!' said Lynch, 
rhymingly, and the accursed jingle got caught 
up in the swirl of ideas racing through my 
1 106 ] 



THE SHEARS OF ATROPOS 



fevered brain, so that while I talked I kept 
hearing over and over, * After you, friend Mc- 
Adoo after you, friend McAdoo after you' 
b'r'rgh! What is more frightful than try 
ing to do mental work in the face of a de 
lirium ? 

"I am not clear as to just what McAdoo 
said; it was Lynch who made the opening 
move, and this time he did not say, l After you, 
friend McAdoo ! ' He drew his revolver and 
waved McAdoo to a large lounging chair. I 
shall never forget that chair ; it was a home 
made, or rather a native-made chair like 
those one sees to-day, with a back the angle 
of which is regulated by a rod behind, which 
is dropped into notches you know the kind. 
At the top there was a little pillow for the 
head to rest against a little 'baby-blue' pil 
low and it was hollowed in the middle where 
poor Cullen's head had. rested, and worn 
until the fabric held in a streaky sort of way 
that showed the white beneath. It was prob 
ably made in England by some girl parish- 
1 107 ] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



ioner, and there was something in its home 
liness that made me feel as the diary had. 

"It was crushed beneath McAdoo's great 
shoulders as he sank into it and he did sink, 
Doctor, as if he had been hamstrung. In the 
middle of the room there was a little bamboo 
table, on which the servant was about to set 
the lamp, but Lynch motioned to place it on 
a shelf behind him. He himself sat at the 
table, facing McAdoo, his back straight, as 
the back of a thoroughbred should be, and the 
revolver lying in his hand near the middle of 
the table. 

"I walked up to him, staggering a little, 
and threw down the diary. 

" 'What is this?' asked Lynch. 

" 'After you, friend the diary of the Rev. 
E. M. Cullen! What do you think it is a 
skull?' I snapped. He raised his eyebrows. 

1 1 i There is a divan at the end of the room, 

Doctor, ' he said, without taking his eyes from 

McAdoo. 'Lie there, if you please, during 

our proceedings.' There was a cold, official 

[108] 



THE SHEARS OF ATROPOS 



note in his voice which seemed to recall the 
shuffle of heavy feet, whispers, whimpers, 
somnolence on one side of the room and 
nerves stretched like the strings of a violin 
on the other. Dulled as I was, I could see that 
it brought back something to McAdoo, for it 
was at these very first words that he began to 
slump doubly armed from the start as he 
had been, surrounded by his servants and in 
the house which he had claimed as his own. 

"Then Lynch began to read intently and 
with no apparent thought of the man opposite 
him. I had sunk in a heap on the divan, de- 
liciously relaxed leaving it all to Lynch, 
and humming, 'After you, friend Mc 
Adoo,' to myself, as I thought, until Lynch 
remarked, coldly: 'Doctor, kindly refrain 
from interrupting the reading of the testi 
mony.' Then I subsided, very much embar 
rassed. 

" Achl how I see it now, Doctor, just as I 
saw it then; as if I was standing apart a 
fourth person regarding the other three: 
,[109], 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



Lynch with the light behind him, his face in 
the shadow, carefully reading the journal and 
apparently oblivious to the fully armed giant 
who appeared to have shrunk on sinking into 
the chair of his late victim; apparently ob 
livious to me also as I lay muttering on the 
divan at the other end of the room, and rous 
ing myself at longer intervals, as the con 
flagration within my veins gained headway. 
The servant in placing the lamp upon the 
shelf had moved a little clock, which had run 
down, and the jar had set it ticking, and this 
and the sharp rustle as Lynch turned the 
leaves were the only noises in that room un 
less my mutterings were audible, which may 
have been. 

"Such a fever as mine is like a- fire, Doctor; 
it leaps upward, then sinks, flickers, smoul 
ders for a while, and then bursts out to rage 
with fresh fury. It was in one of these- lapses, 
one of these returns almost to the normal, 
that Lynch finished his perusal. 

"I opened my eyes as he laid down the 
[110] 



THE SHEARS OF ATROPOS 



journal with a smart slap. Lynch had turned 
half-way in his chair, and the yellow light 
threw out in sharp profile his straight brow, 
short aquiline nose and firm legal mouth and 
chin. There is a forensic type, just as there 
is any other type, and this was Lynch 's, ex 
cept that there was to him an element of the 
terse and martial rather than the parliament 
ary. His revolver was lying in the center of 
the table, and his sinewy hands were in front 
of him, just beneath his chin, the finger-tips 
touching, the elbows on the arms of his chair. 
"McAdoo was in the same position the 
position of the rabbit confronted by the 
stoat; shoulders hunched, head sunk, 
muscle-heavy arms hanging limp outside 
the arms of the chair, utterly relaxed, 
yet held half-bent by the tonic con 
traction of the biceps, and so utter was this 
relaxation that the hands seemed swollen, the 
veins on the dorsum stretched to bursting. 
His bloodshot eyes were fastened on the re 
volver in front of him, which was nickeled and 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



threw the limpid lamp-light from its separate 
planes in steady tongues of flame. Perhaps 
it was this that held him the hypnosis, the 
somnambulizing of the optic nerve. 

" * Where is the daughter of Robert Cul- 
len?' asked Lynch, crisply. McAdoo started; 
his great head was raised with a jerk of such 
suddenness that one could almost hear the 
creak of the cervical vertebrae. And his voice ! 
Ah! it was ridiculous. You have heard the 
whistle of this steamer, Doctor, when on en 
tering a port the cord is pulled while the whis 
tle is still filled with the water of condensa 
tion ? It was such a noise. 

" 'Where is the daughter? answer me, 
man ! ' said Lynch, sharply. 

"I clapped my hands and one of the soft- 
footed women slithered to the door of the 
room. It was the same who had taken me to 
the deaf-mute girl. 

' ' * Bring your mistress hither, ' said I. The 
woman vanished. 

".Our speech had brought a change in Me- 
[112] 



THE SHEAES OF ATROPOS 



Adoo. The lusterless look had left his eyes, 
and even in my benumbed condition I detected 
a twitching of his thick fingers. 

" 'After you ' I began, thickly, then re 
alized that I was talking nonsense, but Lynch 
also had seen the movement. His hand fell 
upon the revolver. 

11 'If you move a muscle you are a dead 
man, friend McAdoo,' he said, softly. 'I fear 
that you are no better than a dead man as it 
is but I should advise you not to bring the 
matter to a climax until all of the evidence 
is in.' 

''We waited in silence; even the clock had 
stopped its ticking; the journal was lying on 
the table. Lynch, I remember, was twisting 
the ends of his wiry mustache with his free 
hand. Perhaps the tension had cleared my 
head ; perhaps the drugs, taken, as usual, four 
hours before the paroxysm was due, were be 
ginning to act ; at any rate, my mind was ac 
tive abnormally so. 

"The crisis had passed with McAdoo; he 
[ H3 ] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



was no longer held by shock, surprise, rage, 
the psychic force of the man in front of him, 
or the hypnotizing force of the shining 
weapon. The little bullet in the weapon was 
all that held him now and I do not think that 
it would have held him long in that position, 
for he had the pluck of a pig, and his eyes 
were beginning to dance again, when there 
was a rustle in the doorway and a white-clad 
figure paused on the threshold. 

"I looked at her face and the sight of it 
chilled the fever in my blood and whipped 
the mist of delirium from my brain. When I 
had seen her before it had been the face of a 
beautiful child a frightened, wretched child 
but now it was different, matured. Lynch 
saw it, too just the swiftest glance, and then 
his keen eyes flew back to the man, who was 
only awaiting his opportunity. Afterwards 
I learned that Lynch possessed the science of 
the sign language practiced by these folk ; he 
possessed also the science of developing upon 
his brain an instantaneous photograph taken 
[114] 



THE SHEARS OF ATROPOS 



with the eyes, and this science made the first 
unnecessary, for you see, Doctor, the girl was 
looking at her father's murderer and who 
knows what beside ! Ah, how true it is, as you 
said a little while ago, that the horror re 
flected from the eyes of another is far more 
dreadful than the thing itself ! 

''Lynch made a movement of dismissal 
with his hand a judicial gesture which told 
me that it was over; the verdict rendered; 
sentence pronounced. But I was puzzled for 
the next eh step. 

* ' ' Take her back, ' I said to the servant. 

" 'Dr. Leyden,' said Lynch, 'do you feel 
that you are in possession of your faculties ? ' 
My head was roaring like a cataract, my skin 
like ice, and my bones were smouldering coals, 
but my brain was clear for the moment too 
clear. 

" 'Quite,' I answered 'in so far as this 
man is concerned.' 

" 'What is your opinion? What course 
would you advise in the matter?' 



THE MOUNTAIN' OF FEARS 



" 'I would advise shooting him,' said I. 
'He requires to be shot, and I do not think 
that we should waste much time about it. If 
you do not care to shoot him, I will do so my 
self, ' I added. Personally, his death was nec 
essary to our safety in a way, yet that did not 
occur to me. I was thinking of the diary, the 
little blue pillow and the deaf-mute girl. 

" 'It makes no difference,' said Lynch, and 
his hand tightened on the stock of the re 
volver; then he suddenly paused and I 
guessed why. 

* * ' She cannot hear, ' I said. ' She is deaf. ' 

' * ' That is so I overlooked the fact, ' softly. 

"McAdoo was watching Lynch in a fasci 
nated way and I was watching McAdoo. 
When the report came he pitched forward, 
and I scrambled to my feet and rescued the 
little blue pillow." 

Leyden was silent and so was I. He did 

nothing, said nothing, but we both sat and 

watched the growing lights in the sea, the in 

crease in the phosphorescence as the moon set. 

[116] 



THE SHEARS OF ATROPOS 



"It was really a very simple matter," said 
Leyden, lightly, ''and it has always been a 
source of satisfaction to me. It was all so 
sensible ; so many fools would have wanted to 
give the brute a chance. Lynch had the right 
idea; he did not even invite any closing re 
marks; the only one that was really apropos 
was made by his Colt, and was quite unan 
swerable. 

"Would you believe it, Doctor, the people 
were sufficiently Christianized to regard the 
whole thing as a visitation. Not a soul was 
in sight when we left, taking the girl with us. 
Lynch himself conducted her back to Eng 
land and placed her in an institution. 

"Yes the trip was a success. My an 
thropologist thought so, I thought so, Lynch 
thought so, and I have not the slightest doubt 
that the semi-civilized Dyaks, who still slip 
through the shadows and peer between the 
jalousies of the ruined mission-house at the 
thing which is, perhaps, still held in that am 
ple chair, think so as well." 
[117] 




ROSENTHAL THE JEW 

| E YDEN and I paused in our con 
versation and, leaning our backs 
against the steamer's rail, lis 
tened in some amusement to an 
argument between a group of 
our fellow-passengers. That is to say, I was 
thoughtless enough to be amused ; Leyden lis 
tened with his usual quiet consideration. 

At Paramaribo there had taken passage for 
New York a wiry little Jew named Gonzalez. 
He was a cheerful little man, who was pleas 
ing from his sincere politeness. The other 
passengers, especially the Dutch, had rather 
made a butt of his provincialism, and it 
seemed to me that their attitude toward him 
was edged with a bit of malice. Apparently 
they resented his claim as a fellow-country 
man. 

[118] 



ROSENTHAL THE JEW 



The argument grew wanner; I could not 
follow it, as they spoke Dutch, but it was easy 
to see that Gonzalez was growing angry; the 
others were laughingly sarcastic. Presently 
the Jew, whose shrill voice had risen in key, 
said something bitter and walked rapidly 
away, and as he passed us I saw that his thin 
face was working with emotion. The others 
frowned ; one gave a short laugh, then looked 
at us a bit sheepishly. Leyden made a little 
gurgle in his throat, a sound which carried 
disapproval. I glanced at him inquiringly. 

"They are baiting him because he claims 
to be a Dutchman," said Leyden. "It is a 
shame ; he is a good little man. He told me 
yesterday why he was going to New York. It 
seems that he has a half-sister with Pott's 
disease of the spine, and he is going to consult 
a specialist to determine whether anything 
can be done for her, also how much it will 
cost. Probably there is not a person on this 
ship whose errand is so unselfish. Achl They 
are a much maligned people, the Jews ! ' ' 
[119] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



For several moments he drew vigorously at 
his big porcelain pipe. "Doctor," he asked, 
presently, * * did you ever meet Isidore Bosen- 
thal?" 

"No," said I. "Who is he?" 

"A Jew, a power in the West Indies. This 
little chap reminds me of him because he is 
so different. There are three people in the 
West Indies who are worth knowing. One 
is Mallock, another is Arjolas and the third 
is Isidore Rosenthal." 

Leyden stirred the ashes of his pipe, while 
I waited. Gonzalez, who passed near me, had 
swallowed his pique and was talking in bad 
English to a Portuguese adventuress. "Yes, 
Madame, ' ' he was saying, ' ' I have traveled a 
great deal. I have been to Demerara, to Trin 
idad and to Venezuela. Now I am going to 
New York. If a man has the means it is his 
duty to travel; he should see the world, im 
prove his mind and I, I have the means. I 
own a chemist's shop in Paramaribo - " 

"Rosenthal," said Leyden, "is a Czechian 



ROSENTHAL THE JEW 



Jew, the most malignant type ; aggressive as 
a hotel child. When he dies, if the Hebrew 
heaven is not up to his ideas, the Christians 
will have a hard time to keep him out of 
theirs. He is a big-boned, muscular, hairy 
brute, with the push of a peccary and the vi 
tality of a dose of Chagres fever. His present 
occupation is selling the Santo Dominicans 
expensive things which they don't want. As 
soon as he gets all of their money he will go 
somewhere else." 

"He appears to have qualities," I ob 
served. 

"He has some of them ones with which 
you would not credit him. We were once in 
volved in an affair, and there are few men 
for whom I have more respect. 

"I first met Bosenthal in Curasao, where 
he and his younger brother, Jacob, as poison 
ous a cripple as ever drew breath, were doing 
a nice little business which combined gam 
bling and pawnbroking. Their method was 
this : Having the entree to the select circle of 

J 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



South American exiles and refugees and con 
spirators for you must know that almost 
every South and Central American revolution 
is hatched under the protection of the Dutch 
flag Jacob, who was rather expert at cards, 
would manage to start a game. No doubt the 
play was honest ; his policy was neither to lose 
nor to win a great deal, but simply to keep 
things moving. In time some one would lose 
heavily, for Jacob had a talent for drawing 
the others out and was liberal with cognac 
and champagne. These South Americans, as 
you have observed, possess a passion for jew 
elry ; the first thing which your South Ameri 
can who has made a successful financial coup 
will buy is a gem ; on the other hand, when he 
loses heavily he is open for a good offer on 
his solitaire or brilliants, and this was Isi 
dore's department. He would manage to be 
about with some stones to show the winner 
and ready cash with which to purchase from 
a loser, or perhaps to negotiate a loan, and 
he was diplomatic enough to accomplish this 
[122] 



ROSENTHAL THE JEW 



without becoming unpopular. He had a man 
ner of loud and blatant camaraderie, was 
ready to give way in trifles, and I have even 
known him to loan out a good round sum 
without any security whatever. He was a 
friend of the friendless and had the reputa 
tion of being honest and liberal. 

"Between them the pair should have done 
very well had Jacob been designed on the 
large scale of Isidore, but he was not. I think 
he envied Isidore 's physique and manner and 
popularity, whereas the elder brother loved 
Jacob devotedly and would nurse him like a 
mother through his occasional attacks of ill 
ness, for one of Jacob's lungs was far gone 
with tuberculosis. I remember Isidore's 
boarding the steamer once in Vera Cruz when 
I was returning from an expedition into Yuca 
tan. It seems that he had heard of my being 
aboard, and he came to me haggard with 
watching and worry and told me that he 
feared that Jacob was dying of fever. 

" 'These doctors are a set of fools!' he 
[123] 



THE MOUNTAIN' OF FEARS 



cried, in his big, discordant bass. 'They do 
not know the fever when they see it; they 
say it is the lung, but I know that it is the 
fever, also.' 

" 'But, my dear fellow,' I protested, 'I am 
not a physician ; I am nothing but a collector. ' 

11 'Peste!' he answered, for, as he was an 
Austrian and I a Hollander, we talked in 
French. 'There is no one who knows more 
of the pernicious malaria than yourself. Will 
you come and see the little Jacob ! ' 

' ' ' But I am already overdue with my speci 
mens,' I objected. 

" 'Didble!' he growled. 'What are weeds 
and stones and ancient rubbish to the life of 
my dear little Jacob ? You shall lose nothing, 
and if you save his life ' he hauled a chamois 
bag from some recess of himself and threw a 
glittering handful of gems upon my bunk 
'help yourself; take them all, if you like. 
Some of them I hold as security, but it makes 
no difference ' the man grinned ' I get them 

all in the end.' 

[124] 



" 'Put up your ill-gotten gains,' said I, 
much provoked. ' I '11 wait over a steamer and 
see what I can do because I like your affec 
tion for your brother.' 

"He grinned again. I got out my micro 
scope and went ashore with him, to find that 
he was correct. The cripple 's blood swarmed 
with the malarial organisms, but we managed 
to overcome them. When I came to leave he 
was quite out of danger. 

"It was about six months later that I was 
in a little hotel in New York much frequented 4 
by people from south of the tropic, when who 
should come in but Eosenthal. I saw imme 
diately that he was in trouble. His big, 
swarthy, Satanic face was seamed and lined 
and his shaggy black eyebrows almost hid his 
fierce green eyes. 

" 'Bon jour, Dr. Leyden,' said he, roughly. 
'I heard that you were here and have come to 
engage your services.' 
' " 'Indeed! 'said I. 

" 'But yes it is Jacob again. Ah, mon 
[ 125 ] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



dieu!' He broke into violent profanity, and 
his yellow teeth gleamed from beneath his 
bristling mustache. 'He is in the prison at 
Porto Cabello.' 

"Personally, Doctor, I thought no doubt 
that that was precisely where he belonged, but 
I naturally did not say so to Isidore. Instead 
I asked him for particulars. 

" 'You have heard of "La Fouchere?" ' he 
snapped, * the wife of that nigger doctor from 
Hayti who spends most of his time hanging 
around the Moulin Rouge?' 

11 'They are acquaintances of mine/ said I. 

"'The- -!' 1 will not repeat the term 
which he applied to the lady, Doctor. 'When 
I left Curagao a month ago, ' said Rosenthal, 
' she was there waiting for the French steamer 
on her way to Paris. You know she is as white 
as myself (as a matter of fact La Fouchere 
would have made Rosenthal look a Zulu, as 
the woman's skin was like a piece of paper 
held against the light) 'and she is as beautiful 
as sin. Little Jacob must fall in love with 
[126] 



EOSENTHAL, THE JEW 



her, like the child he is. They go together to 
Caracas, and while there she falls in with an 
old flame, General Trocas, and the two of 
them plan to get possession of the bag of 
gems which I left with Jacob while in the 
States.' 

" 'Bad business/ said I. 'I know Trocas 
also. ' He was the chap, Doctor, who broke up 
my Orinoco expedition and landed me in the 
prison at Cumana. 

" 'Is it not, mon cher? But the little Jacob 
is no fool; they have had him arrested and 
searched on a charge of conspiring in Cura- 
gao, but they have been unable to find the 
gems -- ' 

" 'And so have lodged him at Porto Ca- 
bello until the stones are forthcoming?' 

" 'Bather through spite, and it is to get 
him out that I wish to engage your services, 
my dear Doctor.' 

" 'Indeed?' said I. 

" 'My plan is this,' said Kosenthal. 'The 
fortress is, as you know, full of political pris- 
[127] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEAKS 



oners from the last revolution, and, as there 
is no immediate prospect of another revolu 
tion, they are apt to remain there for some 
time. You know, Doctor' he grinned at me 
'how very poor are the accommodations of 
these hostelries. I know of a dozen wealthy ex 
iles in Curasao who would contribute a large 
sum toward the rescue of their friends. My 
plan is to quietly raise such a subscription 
and proceed to Porto Cabello and get the 
gems, which I will turn over to the command 
ant of the prison on consideration that he per 
mits the escape of Jacob. You in the mean 
time will quietly charter a schooner in Cura- 
gao for a scientific expedition, sail across and 
on a certain night be off Porto Cabello. We 
will communicate there. The prison guards 
on that night will be blind to a boat under the 
sea-wall, and instead of the escape of Jacob 
alone there will be an escape of all of the po 
litical prisoners. The subscription of the 
others will reimburse me for the expense of 
ransoming Jacob.' 

[128] 



ROSENTHAL THE JEW 



"I reflected for a moment, then asked him 
if he thought the commandant of the prison 
would keep his faith. 

" 'We must take some chances, of course,' 
answered Kosenthal. 'For your part, Doctor, 
there is no risk, and you may name your own 
figure. Eemember that I am already deeply 
in your debt. ' 

' ' I turned the thing over in my mind, Doc 
tor, and it seemed quite a reasonable proposi 
tion. You have seen the prison at Porto Ca- 
bello; it is on that little sandy island about 
five hundred yards from the town and only 
about eighty miles from Curasao. The prison 
guards were a lot of shiftless half-breeds and 
would no doubt be drunk by ten o 'clock of the 
appointed night. Curasao schooners were al 
ways coming and going on the whole, it 
seemed no difficult achievement, and it cer 
tainly is a commendable act to get any one 
out of a Venezuelan prison, whether he be 
longs there or not. I made a bargain with 
Eosenthal for five hundred dollars, which he 
[ 129 ] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



paid me on the spot. The next day we sailed 
for Curagao on the Ked D. 

"There was no difficulty about my part of 
the programme. I chartered one of the 
chunky little tubs which you saw in Curasao, 
engaged three Pa;piewe^0-jabbermg negroes 
and a cook and cleared for Porto Cabello, giv 
ing it out that I was on a collecting cruise 
along the coast. 

"It took me six days to slam that old tub 
against the trade to Porto Cabello, about 
eighty miles in a straight line ; weather just as 
it is now as it always is down there the 
wind dead ahead and blowing the top off the 
water, and the sky bright and clear and blue. 
Arrived, I anchored near the mouth of the 
little inlet, and, after being duly inspected, 
went ashore to see if I could gather any in 
formation; but there was nothing to be 
learned. 

"For a week I hung about that hot, 
wretched hole; then the Dutch mail steamer 
arrived from La Guayra, and on going aboard 
[130] 



ROSENTHAL THE JEW 



to greet some old acquaintances the first man 
I met was Isidore Eosenthal. 

"The Jew's Satanic face was more malig 
nant than ever; the glare in his green eyes 
put one in mind of a jaguar; I saw at once 
that something had gone wrong. 

' * ' Ah, the - ! ' he snarled, when we were 
alone. ' You were right, Leyden! The pigs! 
The robbers ! The vile liars !' His rage was 
positively alarming. His black eyebrows 
worked up and down, and his yellow teeth 
gnawed at the corner of his black mus 
tache. 

' ' ' They got your gems 1 ' I asked. 

" 'Yes, and they warned me to leave on the 
next steamer; they would have thrown me 
into prison but that they feared to have the 
story get out and be obliged to divide - ' He 
broke off suddenly from his tirade and sur 
prised me by grinning with amusement. 'I 
should like to see their faces a few days 
later!' 

" 'Whose faces?' I asked, in surprise. 
[131] 



THE MOUNTAIN" OF FEARS 



' ' ' Trocas and that - ! ' He really had a 
very poor opinion of 'La Fouchere.' 

" 'Why?' I asked, although I had my sus 
picions. 

' ' ' Oh, never mind. There are other things 
to think of. Bribery has failed; there is 
left only force.' He looked at me inquir 
ingly. 

" 'Force?' said I, for at that time a Jew 
and a fight were not associated in my mind. 

" 'Tiens!' said he, 'we cannot return and 
leave the little Jacob in that cesspool ! Think 
of his lung, my dear Doctor ; besides, it would 
be necessary to refund the money subscribed 
by our friends in Curasao.' 

" 'Did you give them receipts?' I asked, 
curious to get at the odd principles of the 
man. He looked at me reproachfully. 

' ' ' There, there, Leyden ! Did you ever hear 
f Isidore Eosenthal going back upon his 
word ? ' 

* ' ' I apologize. What is the next move 1 ' 

1 ' Rosenthal shrugged. ' They are not much 
[ 132 ] . 



ROSENTHAL THE JEW 



to be feared, these nigger guards at the 
prison.' He glanced at me furtively. 'Sup 
pose we take a boat to-night and go over and 
get little Jacob?' 

"I did not at once reply. To tell the truth, 
Doctor, I was too much surprised at the sug 
gestion to reply. I knew that Eosenthal pos 
sessed the stubborn courage peculiar to his 
race; but this policy of cold, aggressive dar 
ing seemed incompatible with the Hebrew. He 
watched me narrowly. 

" 'I am not a fighter, my dear friend,' said 
he, thrusting out his hands. 'I am a man of 
affairs, a financier, a diplomat, but there are 
times when all of these things fail. No doubt 
I seem to you like a fool' (he seemed posi 
tively ashamed of himself as ashamed as 
might another man, a Gentile, of a display of 
cowardice), 'but what would you have? They 
will not keep their faith ; to offer more bribes 
would be to throw good money away after 
bad.' He shrugged, chewed at the end of a 
cigar, glanced about him furtively, then took 
[133] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



to gnawing his nails, while I sat and consid 
ered the proposition. 

' ' To tell the truth, Doctor, it was not at all 
attractive. To be sure, the guards were a 
scrubby lot, but there were plenty of them, 
and the prisoners were locked up and had no 
knowledge of any plan for escape. Moreover, 
we did not know in what part of the prison 
they were confined, nor had we any plan of 
the inside of the place. 

" 'You do not object to making an attempt, 
Leyden?' asked Kosenthal, who had been 
watching me narrowly. 

" 'Not if I were able to see how it could be 
done,' I answered, slowly, for, you see, Doc 
tor, he had engaged my services for a particu 
lar piece of work and I was professionally 
bound. If it had been my custom to abandon 
a project because it was dangerous I must 
long ago have sought another profession. 
' Would it not be much better to wait until we 
can try to bribe the guards or establish some 
communication with the prisoners 1 ' said I. 
[134] 



ROSENTHAL THE JEW 



" 'No,' he answered. 'It must be done to 
night, because Trocas knows with whom he 
has to deal, and unless I am mistaken there 
will come an order to-morrow to remove little 
Jacob, probably to Caracas, and you know he 
does very badly in the cold, damp air of the 
mountains ; also, the change of altitude is apt 
to bring out another attack of the fever. ' 

" 'Have you thought of any definite plan?' 
I asked, irritably. He grinned at me like a 
baboon. 

" 'That is for you, my dear Doctor,' said 
he. 'You have had more experience in such 
matters. ' 

" 'That is all very well,' said I, 'but you 
seem to forget that I am engaged by you to 
carry out your orders. Now, go ahead and 
issue them.' 

"His grin left him at this and he began to 
scowl and reach for the overhang of his mus 
tache with his big yellow teeth. Finally he 
said : ' I engaged you, as you say, Doctor, to 
carry out my orders, but I will do better. One 
[ 135 ] 



THE MOUNTAIN 1 OF FEARS 



cannot be avaricious when the life of one's 
brother is concerned. If you will get the little 
Jacob out of that hole I will pay you three 
times what you have received/ 

" 'How about the others?' I asked. 

" 'Oh, the devil take the others! If their 
friends want them let them come after them. 
I will refund their money.' 

" 'Very well,' said I. 'And now I will go 
ashore, as I want to think this thing out 
alone.' 

"Eosenthal grinned his sardonic grin, and 
I left him and, passing through the custom 
house, strolled on across the square, past the 
monument to the American soldiers and over 
into the park opposite the baths, where I sat 
on a bench and tried to think against the in 
fernal clatter of the 'Q'est ce qu'il dit?' birds. 

"For about an hour I sat there, and I can 
assure you, Doctor, that my brain was not 
idle. There were several very potent reasons 
for my wishing to carry through the task 
which I had undertaken. In the first place I 
1 136 1 



ROSENTHAL THE JEW 



needed the money very much. Again, there 
was an old score to settle with Trocas, but I 
think that more than all it was a matter of 
professional pride. It was easy to see that 
Kosenthal was confident that I could carry 
the thing through, yet try as I did I was 
obliged to dismiss each plan as impracticable. 
If word could be got to the prisoners of our 
co-operation it would have been so much eas 
ier, but I was afraid to bribe any of the 
guards,, as there was danger that he would 
pocket the money and then betray us. 

"I was determined that there must be no 
bloodshed. I had no doubt that Jacob had 
been conspiring against the Venezuelan gov 
ernment and had been betrayed by 'La Fou- 
chere. ' I am averse to killing people, Doctor ; 
moreover, I am a Christian and believe in 
God, and I try to keep the ten command- 
ments. In spite of the hazardous character 
of many of my expeditions yon would be sur 
prised to learn how very few men I have been 

obliged to kill or have killed, and the memory 
[137] 



THE MOUNTAIN' OF FEARS 



of these unfortunate affairs is attended with 
regret, but no remorse. 

"While I was vexedly working at this prob 
lem I heard the blare of a discordant bugle 
and a clatter on the pavement of the square, 
and, looking over my shoulder, saw a com 
pany of dusty soldiers stacking their arms in 
front of the cafe. They appeared to be mostly 
Venezuelans. They promptly swarmed into 
the cafe, and I arose and strolled over in that 
direction. The lieutenant in command was a 
short, fat young fellow, and as I drew near he 
said a few words to his sergeant and then left 
his company and walked over toward the cafe 
of the bathhouse. I followed him indolently, 
and as he entered the building I took a chair 
on the verandah and called for spirits and 
cigars. As I was lighting one of the latter 
my lieutenant came out, glanced at me inquir 
ingly, then seated himself at a table. A mo 
ment later some tourists from the Dutch ship, 
killing time as best they might, strolled up, 

and to these I bowed casually as to acquaint- 
[138] 



ances of the voyage. They did not know 
me, of course, but they returned my bow, 
called for beer, drank it and strolled on. 
As they were leaving I remarked in 
English to one of them, apparently an 
American : 

" 'The ship does not sail until night, does 
she?' 

' * ' Not until one o 'clock, ' he replied, agree 
ably, no doubt taking me for a passenger from 
Porto Cabello. 

"For awhile we sat in silence; then my 
lieutenant, who evidently found himself 
greatly bored, turned to me and said, in fair 
English : 

" 'You are a tourist, sir!' 

" 'Yes,' said I, 'and much regretting that 
this is the last which I shall see of Venezuela 
for many months.' There promised to be 
some truth in the last part of this statement, 
Doctor. 

" 'You enjoy Venezuela?' inquired the offi 
cer, evidently pleased. 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



" 'I have conceived a great admiration for 
the people and the country, ' said I. 

11 We talked for some time of the beauties 
of Caracas, he apparently enjoying the unac 
customed exercise of his English. I extolled 
the country, the people, their traditions, their 
bravery, likening their history to that of the 
United States, Bolivar to George Washing 
ton. He expanded like a flower in the sun 
shine. Presently I asked the honor of drink 
ing a bottle of champagne with him, to which 
he agreed, remarking that Americans were to 
him the most delightful of all foreigners. 
Before long I asked him if his military duties 
confined him to Porto Cabello. He sighed 
deeply. 

1 * 'Ah, my friend, it is very sad. No, I have 
simply come down with my commando, which 
you see across the square. I return to-mor 
row, leaving the troop in the fortress yonder, 
as the present garrison was considered insuf 
ficient to guard the desperate political pris 
oners confined there/ 

[140] 



EOSENTHAL THE JEW 



"It struck me that this was rather a tribute 
to the respect entertained for Eosenthal by 
Trocas. 

' ' ' Indeed f ' said I, somewhat idly. 

"He sighed. ' It is a tedious journey, but 
I requested General Trocas to commit the 
care of the men to me, as I expected to find 
here a friend' he smirked at me 'a lady 
in whom I am interested. ' 

"I laughed indulgently. 'You young offi 
cers are roving blades,' said I. 'One cannot 
blame the ladies, however.' 

"He brightened, then sighed again. 'It is 
very sad,' said he. 'I learn from the keeper 
of the hotel that she has sailed for Curagao 
on the steamer before this. She was very 
beautiful, a Portuguese. ' He twirled his thin 
mustache. 

" 'Permit me to offer my sympathy,' said 
I. 'But, of course, there is still wine left, if 
the lady has gone, ' and I ordered another bot 
tle of champagne. 

"Before the bottle was finished, Doctor, he 



THE MOUNTAIN' OF FEARS 



loved me as a brother. I suggested that we 
go aboard the Dutch ship and have an Ameri 
can cocktail. It was a little dangerous, but I 
wished to clinch his confidence in me. He read 
ily agreed and we strolled across the square 
together. On the way we passed his com 
mand, which was what I wished. The men 
were still drinking, but the sergeant was out 
side the cafe and saluted as we passed. 

11 'A good fellow he knows my errand,' 
observed the lieutenant, referring to the ser 
geant, and added that there was no hurry to 
cross to the fortress ; it was a place stiflingly 
hot, and his men were in need of rest and a 
little refreshment. 

" 'You are, of course, acquainted with the 
officers of the garrison?' said I. 

" 'No; there is only the commandant e, a 
rough old fellow' he shrugged as if to sig 
nify that the man was scarcely of his own so 
cial caste. 'There were many promotions 
from the ranks after the revolution,' he 

added. 

[142] 



ROSENTHAL THE JEW 



* ' This, as you can guess, Doctor, was valu 
able information. I changed the subject and 
we boarded the ship. I caught a glimpse of 
Rosenthal as we went up the ladder. His eye 
glinted as it met mine; then he turned his 
back until we had gone below. 

' ' It was then three o 'clock. For two hours 
I poured cocktails into my officer, and by five 
he was very drunk, so drunk that I was able 
to leave him long enough to tell Rosenthal to 
meet me by the fountain in the park in an 
hour. Then I returned to my officer, who was 
nodding over another glass of spirits. I got 
him upon his feet and managed to return with 
him to the hotel without being interrupted. 
There I poured into him another bottle of 
champagne, after which he quietly subsided 
into inertia, when, with the aid of the pro 
prietor, whose disapproval I silenced with a 
fee which he put down to drunken generosity, 
we undressed and put him to bed. 

"The next step was the crucial one. I 
quickly took off my clothes and put on those 
1 143 ] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



of the lieutenant. Then I crossed the square 
to where the commando was still drinking. I 
found the sergeant in the dirty little cafe, him 
self somewhat intoxicated. At sight of me 
he sprang to his feet with an oath. 

' ' ' Silence ! ' said I, in Spanish. * Your lieu 
tenant has persuaded me to take his place for 
a few hours.' 

" 'Where is he?' demanded the sergeant, 
suspiciously. 

"I gave him a drunken leer and slapped 
him lightly on the shoulder. 

' ' ' Can you not guess ! ' I asked, meaningly. 

" 'But it cannot be,' growled the man. 'And 
who are you? It is as much as his commis 
sion is worth!' 

" 'It would be worth more than his com 
mission was worth if he were to accompany 
his command in his present condition,' I 
snapped. 'You do not seem to understand 
that I am doing him a favor at a personal 
risk ; also, he told me to give you this and to 
tell you to keep your mouth shut.' And I 



BOSENTHAL THE JEW 



slipped some gold into his hand. 'It is only 
necessary for me to cross to the fort, deliver 
the command to the commandante and return. 
Your lieutenant is not known to any one 
there.' 

"The fellow wavered, grumbled, slid the 
money into his pocket, eyed me suspiciously ; 
but I laughed and told him that a good ser 
geant must stand by his lieutenant ; then, ris 
ing, I told him to get his men together and 
I would return directly to get them to the fort. 
Although by no means satisfied, he made no 
protest, not knowing just what course to take. 
I left him and walked around the far side of 
the park to where Eosenthal was waiting. 

"He laughed softly as I joined him, and his 
yellow teeth gleamed in the dusk. I simply 
told him to have the boat lying off the sea 
wall of the prison until he heard from me, and 
then returned to the commando, which was 
drawn up in a somewhat vacillating forma 
tion. The men no doubt took me to be an 
officer of the garrison to which they were com- 
[145] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



mitted, but the sergeant was very ill at 
ease. 

* 'I put the column into motion and marched 
them down to the water, where I requisitioned 
the nearest boats at hand and we crossed to 
the island. At the gate of the fortress we 
halted until the arrival of the officer of the 
guard, to whom I presented the papers which 
were in the pocket of the lieutenant's blouse. 

"The officer was a dangerous-looking old 
fellow, apparently a thorough soldier, and, 
while polite, I could see that he was somewhat 
disgusted at my condition. 

" 'At what time did you arrive in Porto 
Cabello 1 ' he inquired, a trifle coldly. 

" 'An hour ago perhaps two,' I answered. 
'There seemed no great hurry; it was very 
hot and my men were in need of refreshments. 
Also, I had some messages from my uncle, his 
Excellency the President, for some friends 
upon the Hollandez.' 

"His manner changed a trifle. He gave a 
few orders to the sergeant, who marched off 
1 146 1 



ROSENTHAL THE JEW 



his unsteady company, with a backward 
glance in my direction, which I affected not 
to see. 

" 'Will you come up to the headquarters?' 
he said. I thanked him and we strolled off 
together. 

"Before we had reached headquarters I 
had restored his good nature, told him some 
good stories, made him laugh heartily and 
evidently convinced him that I was a careless 
good fellow and not to be taken too seriously. 
I declined any refreshment, saying that I had 
been entertained aboard the ship, and after 
a rather dull evening I begged leave to retire. 

"As soon as he was gone I slipped out into 
the enclosure. It was a starry night, still, but 
with no moon. I lit a cigar and walked leis 
urely toward the casemates fronting the sea. 
At the end of fifty yards I came upon a sentry 
sleeping peacefully against the wall. "Walk 
ing to him, I shook him roughly by the shoul 
der. He awoke with a start ; then, seeing an 
officer before him, scrambled to his feet and 
[147] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEAES 



saluted. At the same moment there came 
from one of the casemates a fit of violent but 
muffled coughing. 

" 'Is this the sort of watch which is kept in 
the prison?' I demanded, roughly. 'His Ex 
cellency, my uncle, would be pleased to hear 
of it.' 

1 ' The man was badly frightened. He stam 
mered something about not being asleep; 
then, as I peered into his face, I recognized 
him as one of the men of my command. 

" 'Ah, my friend,' said I, in an altered tone, 
'you are one of those who arrived to-day?' 

" 'Yes, Senor Capitan,' he answered. 

" 'But that is different,' said I, kindly. 
'How is it that you are on duty? There has 
been some mistake. I gave orders that you 
were to have a night 's sleep. There has been 
a mistake, but never mind, sleep here, if you 
like ; God knows you have reason to be tired, 
and that there are three times men enough to 
guard a handful of miserables.' 

" 'Thank you, Senor Capitan/ he an- 
[148] 



ROSENTHAJL THE JEW 



swered ; and as he spoke, the violent coughing 
broke out again from some dark recess. 

* ' ' There is a poor wretch who seems very 
ill,' said I, conversationally. 'Is it one of the 
garrison ? ' 

" 'It must be one of the political prisoners, 
Senor Capitan/ replied the soldier. 'They 
are all confined in the casemates yonder. ' 

" 'Poor wretch!' said I, and, nodding to the 
soldier, strolled on toward the ramparts. Be 
fore I had gone far I was halted by another 
sentry. I peered at him through the murk. 

" 'Are you one of the new men?' I de 
manded. , 

" 'No, Senor Capitan,' he answered, salut 
ing. 

" 'The lazy rascals!' said I, tersely. 'I 
gave orders that they were to go on duty im 
mediately as a reward for abusing my good 
nature and getting drunk. Are they in the 
cuartel with you?' 

" 'No, Senor Capitan; they are in the cuar 
tel yonder at the angle of the wall.' 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



" 'Bueno! I will soon break up their sweet 
dreams, the drunken vagabonds. Who is your 
sergeant!' He told me the man's name. 

11 'And when are you to be relieved?' 

" 'At midnight,' said he. 

" 'Very well. You may return to your 
quarters, and if your sergeant is awake tell 
him that I have put one of my men in your 
place. Go ! ' 

" 'Si, Senor.' He saluted and slouched 
away. 

"I proceeded, and in a few minutes had re 
lieved two more of the regular garrison and 
bid one of the new men sleep at his post. 

"It was then ten o'clock; there were two 
hours ahead of me. I made my way to the 
sea-wall and, reaching below the rampart 
with one arm, struck a match, extinguished it, 
struck another and extinguished that. A mo 
ment later I heard the soft grinding of oars 
and the boat glided out of the darkness. Eos- 
enthal's great frame hove itself up over the 
rampart, then dropped into the shadow under 
[ 150 ] 



ROSENTHAL THE JEW 



the wall, and I heard his discordant laugh sti 
fled to a hissing gurgle. He carried a pick 
axe. 

" 'Diable!' said he. 'I heard you relieve 
the sentries ! I was close under the wall. It 
was funny ! Have you found where they have 
put little Jacob?' 

11 'Yes,' I answered. 'Follow me.' 

"I led him along the angle of the wall until 
we came to the casemates where the sentry 
had said that the prisoners were confined, and 
then, as we paused before the first of these, 
the utter stillness was again broken by a 
paroxysm of coughing; and this time, al 
though no less violent than before, it struck 
me that there was in it an accent of exhaustion 
an extreme exhaustion as of muscles too 
fatigued to respond even to a reflex. 

" 'Sacre!' growled Rosen thai, and gripped 
my arm. 'Do you hear that? It is the little 
Jacob. ' He flew to the door of the casemate ; 
the port on the other side opened on the sea, 
and was, of course, heavily barred. Eosen- 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



thai smote the heavy door several times with 
the ball of his hand. 

" 'Jacob!' he called, softly. 'Jacob, Jacob, 
my dear little Jacob!' He leaped back and 
raised his pick ; it seemed as if the sounds of 
his sick brother's distress had robbed him of 
his senses. 

"I seized the pick, and he whirled on me 
with a snarl. Indeed, Doctor, the Jew was 
like a tigress who hears the wail of a captured 
cub. 

" 'Idiot!' I whispered, 'do you want to 
rouse the garrison?' 

' ' ' Listen ! ' said he, and raised his hand sud 
denly. I listened, and in a lull of the surf 
there reached our ears a series of pathetic 
sounds. You know the sound, Doctor; the 
feeble strangling of a pulmonary patient 
when too weak to cough, something between 
a cough and a rattle and then it suddenly 
ceased and there came to our ears, in a voice 
as thin as a wafer's edge: 'Isidore! 1 

"And then Eosenthal went mad. He knew, 
[152] 



ROSENTHAL THE JEW 



we both knew, that Jacob was dying; there 
was no mistaking that. It would be a matter 
of at least two hours' hard work to liberate 
him without noise, and we both felt that by 
that time he would be already liberated ; and 
Rosenthal, the Jew, whose habit and training 
and every instinct was that of weighing cost 
and gain, decided that he could not afford to 
wait, garrison or no garrison. Apparently life 
held nothing which could compensate him for 
the privilege of holding his crippled brother 
in his powerful arms while the struggling soul 
was fighting its way to the God of his fathers. 
Before I could interfere and, indeed, I did 
not try very hard to interfere, Doctor, for was 
I not paid to carry out the man's orders? 
he had raised the pick and assailed the heavy 
door with a fury that filled the silent fortress 
with thundering reverberations. 

' ' Lights began to flash out in the barracks ; 
at a distance a sentry fired his piece for an 
alarm. I heard shouts and cries and orders, 
and through it all Rosenthal, the Jew, stood 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



and hewed away at the door, till all at once, 
even as I saw a squad of men running toward 
us, it fell away, and Rosenthal, throwing aside 
his pick, leaped into the casemate, and from 
the blackness within I heard a fierce sob as 
he gathered his dying brother to his breast. 

* ' For me there was no time for sentiment. 
As the first group of soldiers drew near there 
arose from the landward side a strident blast. 
I recognized the whistle of the Dutch steamer, 
which was going out. In sight of the soldiers 
I sprang to the open door of the casemate, 
peered within, then rushed to meet them. 

1 ' ' Some prisoners have escaped ! ' I howled. 
* See, the door of the casemate has been torn 
away ! Did you not hear the noise, sluggards 1 
Look!' I pointed toward the town, where, 
above the farther wall, we could see the mast 
head light of the steamer. 'They have fled 
to the Hollandez!' 

"The cry was taken up: 'They have fled 
to the Hollandez!' and the soldiers, with a 
glance at the dark entrance of the casemate, 
[154] 



46* * 

ROSENTHAL THE JEW 

turned and made off toward the main gate. 
On the way they met the commandante, who, 
hearing their cries, rushed to the jetty and 
bawled at the steamer to stop. 

1 ' The place was deserted again and I softly 
entered the dungeon. I could see nothing in 
the gloom, but from the shadow I heard a 
deep, choking voice say : 'Jacob! Jacob! Acli, 
mein lieber Jacob ! Mein kleiner, lieber Jacob !' 

" 'Isidore mein b ruder Isidore!' came 
the thin answer, and then there was a gurgle, 
a strangling cough, a sigh as of a soul ex 
hausted, a body spent with vain struggling, 
and yet a sigh filled with promise of an in 
finite peace. I heard a rustling, such a sound 
as comes from a tired child as its head falls 
back upon its mother's breast. There was the 
sound of a multitude of kisses, a choked sob 
then silence, which endured for many min 
utes. 

" 'Come, my friend,' I said, softly. 'We 
must go, if you wish to take Jacob away.' 

"I led the way and Kosenthal followed me 
1 155 ] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEAES 



out into the night, bearing the body of liis 
brother in his arms, his broad chest shaken 
with sobs. We scaled the wall, called softly 
and a moment later our Curagao men pulled 
the boat alongside." 

Leyden paused, relit his pipe, puffed a few 
times in silence. 

"They overran that Dutch steamer like 
cockroaches," he continued, with a chuckle, 
"and for a while the government seriously 
considered withdrawing the privileges of 
their ports to the line. Ultimately it was de 
cided to let them off with a reprimand, be 
cause, you see, the steamers were the only 
opportunity the port officials had of get 
ting their weekly allowance of spirits for 
nothing. 

"Rosenthal? We made the run back to 
Curasao in thirty-six hours, because, you see, 
the trade always blows the same way. The 
day we arrived Rosenthal paid me fifteen hun 
dred dollars, the price agreed for the rescue 

of Ms brother. 

[156] 



EOSENTHAL THE JEW 



" 'It is too much,' said I, 'especially as we 
did not liberate the other prisoners.' 

" 'It was the price agreed,' he said, 'but 
if you say so I will take off ten per cent, for 
cash. ' 

" 'Even then it is too much. There were 
the jewels which you gave to Trocas - ' 

"Eosenthal chuckled. 'They were imita 
tions,' said he. 'I got them in New York. 
Those I left with little Jacob were also imita 
tions. I knew my little brother's weak 
nesses,' he added, and the tears gushed out 
of his eyes." 



[157] 




TWO SAVAGES. 

E must really turn over a new leaf, 
Doctor," said my shipmate, Dr. 
Leyden, the collector of natural 
rarities. "Our tales have been 
growing more and more grue 
some each night, until mere murder has quite 
lost its pungency ! To-night I will tell you a 
different sort of story a love story, from the 
view-point of the primitive; a funny story 
as well although it would be hard to say 
whether the humor belong to the Stone Age 
or some age still to come. 

"I was telling you last night about the ex 
pedition into Borneo for the heads; this 
was immediately after. When we reached 
the sea I was in a very bad way running a 
steady, low fever, with diurnal rises, when I 
would become quite delirious, and the region 
about my spleen was so tender that it pained 
[158] 



TWO SAVAGES 



me to breathe. My companion and his charge 
departed immediately by a vessel which was 
sailing for Sarawak, but I waited for a few 
days and then sailed by a schooner for Sulu, 
as this was a shorter voyage, and I wanted 
medical attendance as soon as I could get it. 

' ' This was before your war, Doctor, when 
nine out of ten Americans would have told 
you that if Sulu was not in South Africa it 
must be somewhere in the West Indies. You 
know Jolo, the pretty little toy city, with its 
mediaeval walls, where the sleepy Spanish 
sentries drowsed on the ramparts and gaped 
down into the immured market-place, ogling 
the pretty Mestiza girls, when they should 
have been keeping watch to see that none of 
the Moro gentry went jementado and pro 
ceeded to reduce the Christian census. It is 
the freshest place in the archipelago and the 
coolest, although so near the equator, for the 
trades sweep right across the little island and 
blow the most of the time. 

"You remember the Englishmen who were 
[159] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



doing so well with the pearls ? A temporary 
manager of theirs proved to be an old ac 
quaintance of mine a harum-scarum sort of 
chap, undoubtedly well-born, unquestionably 
badly behaved, handsome, vicious, kind- 
hearted when the notion took him, at other 
times as rough as a Liverpool navvy. I al 
ways suspected his escutcheon of bearing the 
baton sinister. 

' ' Stewart was his name. I had known him 
in the Marquesas, where he had been the 
agent of an Australian firm. He asked me to 
his house, and I was glad to accept, for I liked 
the scamp, in spite of his wickedness, and, be 
sides, I was in no condition to be left to the 
tender mercies of native inn-keepers. 

1 ' Stewart used to swear like a trooper when 
one of my chills would shake the whole of the 
little basket-house and disturb his siesta ; then 
up he would get, clad only in the lower half 
of his pajamas, and rough the servants about 
and work over me as if he loved me. Ach! 
how it seems like yesterday that I have seen 
[ 160 ] 



TWO SAVAGES 



him, naked to the waist, leaning over me, with 
his hands full of hot-water bottles, and his 
mouth full of blasphemies when one of them 
burned his fingers, the great muscles rippling 
the fresh skin of his arms as he moved me in 
the bed and his fierce, handsome face, with its 
deep lines of hard living, puckered in doubt 
one could see the two natures fighting it out 
within him. 

"The officers of the little garrison gave 
him a wide berth; they were afraid of him. 
In fact, about everybody in the place was 
afraid of him, from the Governor-General 
down to his own native women, of whom he 
had an interesting collection. He was a sort 
of blond devil. I am sure that I do not know 
why he so befriended me, unless it was be 
cause it was pleasant to find some one who 
was not afraid of him. 

"I had begun to get about a little, but was 

still an invalid, when there arrived in the port 

the auxiliary yacht of the Count Asquin. I 

was admiring the vessel from our little bal- 

[161] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



cony, when Stewart came up and suggested 
that we go out aboard her. At first I declined, 
as the people were not known to us, nor we to 
them. 

" 'What's the odds!' said he. 'Perfectly 
good form in a hole like this. They've come 
purposely to see the place and people. 
They're our guests, by Gad!' 

1 1 There was something in this, so I agreed 
and we put off. I am rather diffident, Doctor, 
but I knew that Stewart would carry the thing 
off with his usual blunt, reckless, high-bred 
ease; there was so much style to the fellow, 
and he looked so fresh and well-groomed and 
aristocratic, and altogether the gentleman, 
which in so very many ways he was not. 
There was a strong ranginess about him which 
suggested the university athlete; the curly, 
crisp, yellow hair, the close-cropped mustache 
and the fresh but weather-beaten skin, all 
marked him for a thoroughbred. If he had 
got drunk every night of the week and slept 
in all his clothes he could have got up in the 
[162] 



TWO SAVAGES 



morning and given himself a shake and looked 
the same. The secret lay in good blood some 
where the close set of his small, well-shaped 
ears and the poise of his small head on his 
broad shoulders. Achl If his behavior had 
only been as fine as his appearance 

"As we pulled alongside we saw a lady and 
a gentleman under the after awning, but they 
did not rise. There was a burly Breton quar 
termaster at the gangway, and he saluted and 
called a natty steward to take our cards. A 
moment later the owner came to greet us, and 
we observed that he was a man past middle 
age, gray, sallow, delicate, but distinguished 
in face and carriage. He regarded us for a 
moment in polite inquiry ; then, divining that 
the call was purely social, courteously invited 
us aboard. 

' ' * Hope we 're not intruding, ' said Stewart, 
as he stepped on the deck, 'but we exiles are 
so keen for news from the outer world; be 
sides, it's no end of a treat to see new faces, 
and if you're going to stop any length of time 
1 163 ] 



THE MOUNTAIN' OF FEARS 



perhaps we may be of service. I'm Stewart; 
this is Dr. Leyden.' 

"Our host bowed his acknowledgment. 
'I am the Count Asquin,' he said. I had al 
ready observed that the schooner was under 
the French flag. Stewart was staring at the 
woman under the awning; the Count was 
scrutinizing Stewart. I murmured acknowl 
edgments and took a mental photograph of 
the Count. 'A French nobleman,' I thought. 
'An invalid who does best at sea; asthma pos 
sibly; a student, erudite, polished a phi 
losopher, and withal a man of heart.' Physi 
cally he seemed a wreck, but one saw at a 
glance that a high vitality had been consumed 
in his body and conserved in his brain. His 
eyes were very large, very lustrous, of the 
reddish-brown which told of sentiment, of 
mind the eyes of a poet. There was kind 
ness in the large nose and the full-lipped 
mouth was sensual, but neither weak nor 
selfish; pleasure-loving, but wishful to share 
with others. He wore a grizzled mustache 
[164] 



TWO SAVAGES 



and imperial, which gave a bizarre mask of 
the martial to a face which clearly could not 
have countenanced the killing of a mouse. It 
was a pleasant face the face of a man with 
more friends than admirers. 

''Stewart was still staring at the woman 
under the awning with that bold, British 
stare which would be insulting were it not so 
primitive the stare of a savage, inquiring 
only, and utterly lacking in the volume of 
suggestion which makes the stare of the Latin 
so insupportable. 

' * The Count, satisfied with his scrutiny, in 
vited us aft, and as he glanced from Stewart 
to me I thought that I caught a flicker of 
amusement in his lustrous eyes. I also had 
obtained a glance at the lady. She was evi 
dently young and more than evidently lovely ; 
quite young enough for a daughter and far 
too lovely for the wife of this burned-out 
elderly invalid. 

" 'Will you come aft, messieurs?' said the 
Count. 'Doctor, it is evident that you have 
.[165] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



been ill; permit me to offer you a chaise- 
longue here in the breeze.' He led the way, 
and as we drew near the lady I saw that I 
had done her injustice. She was more than 
lovely; she was positively radiant with a 
beauty of the most alluring type in a land 
where every one is weary and relaxed ; glow 
ing with youth and health and high vitality, 
she was as fresh in that sodden clime as a 
clear wind from the north and yet, there 
was something beside, something less clear, 
more earthy, a lavishness of charm and form 
and feature; her type suggested a creature 
bred for the slave mart. It was evident that 
she was an American ; the women of no other 
race possess that peculiar blending of sub 
tlety, ignorance and audacity. 'A Calif or- 
nian,' thought I; 'a survival of the fittest New 
England stock transplanted from a climate 
where only the very fit do survive to a country 
whose finest crop is babies.' 

"I glanced at the Count, the lax, yellow tis 
sues of whom suggested a squeezed orange, 
[166] 



TWO SAVAGES 



and when he introduced us to her as his wife 
I almost laughed. His wife! The conceit of 
the term, Doctor ; he in whose eyes one could 
see the after-glow of extinguished flames. And 
yet her fate might be far worse. One saw 
with what care he fostered the orchids hang 
ing from the awning ridge-rope ; beautiful, in 
teresting, a care, a treat for the eye, costly 
epiphytes requiring support. Ah, Doctor, 
youth cannot appreciate the higher mo 
tives which inspire age with its craving for 
beauty. 

' ' The Countess murmured a few words, and 
I judged her neither well-born nor clever. 
You know, Doctor, there are in nature certain 
freaks of superabundant beauty just as there 
are freaks of deformity, and she was one of 
these. There was not much else ; planted with 
powerful instincts to take the place of mind, 
as in the lower animals ; fairly well educated 
in a machine-made, American way 'ad 
vanced,' very possibly, but as savage as if 
she roamed the Carpathian scarp clad only 
[167] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



in her abundant hair, which no doubt she 
would have very much enjoyed. 

' * She offered us her hand after the manner 
of 'the Slope,' and as Stewart took it in his 
I saw the blood surge up beneath his yellow, 
tropic tan ; his pale eyes shone like those of a 
gull, and one could see the deep chest swell 
suddenly as he caught his breath. Consider 
the nature of the man, Doctor more animal 
than a well-bred dog, who, after all, has many 
elevated traits, whereas Stewart's were most 
ly low and the fact that he had not seen a 
fair woman for months. 

"The deep blue eyes of the Countess were 
fixed upon Stewart with a sort of startled 
wonder; no doubt the contrasts of the man's 
crushing masculinity with the colorless shell 
of her husband's sex may have struck her as 
a positive shock. There was almost a physi 
cal weight in the impulse which he projected 
toward her. One saw that she took it with a 
little shudder as an hereditary drunkard 
might gulp his first glass of spirits. 
[168] 



TWO SAVAGES 



He stood holding her hand and saying 
what was necessary, and while he was say 
ing it his light, wicked eyes were devouring 
her. The thing was so outrageous that I could 
not help glancing at the Count, and at the 
same moment his soft, dark eyes met mine, 
and, to my amazement, he actually smiled! 
He saw the thing as I saw it; no one could 
have seen it differently; in fact, there was a 
sort of mutual understanding in his smile, but 
nothing unkindly. 

"The Countess was quick to recover her 
poise ; not through breeding nor modesty, but 
from sheer combativeness. She seemed sud 
denly to realize and I have no doubt that 
it struck her as quite a new idea that a 
man could be too familiar with his eyes 
alone. There was plenty of fight in her, 
as one^ could see from the flash of her dark 
blue eyes and the rounded squareness of 
her jaw. She promptly assumed so great an 
air of chilly condescension that Stewart 
stared again and then began to grin. He was 
[169] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



a good talker, however, in his rough, staccato 
way, and soon I saw that she was beginning 
to forget about herself and think about him. 

11 'You have been ill, Doctor?' said the 
Count to me. 'Myself, I am also in feeble 
health asthma, with a uric acid diathesis and 
a bad leak in the mitral valve. Hence the sea, 
the tropics, a sedentary life. By nature I am 
active, and I find it less difficult to remain 
quiet where there is abundant passive motion, 
as aboard a vessel.' 

* * I explained to him the nature of my own 
illness and my reason for coming to Sulu. 

" l l came to rest in smooth waters,' he re 
plied. 'It is a charming island.' We talked 
of other things and soon discovered many mu 
tual friends. When at last we left, at my in 
sistence, the Countess, at the suggestion of 
,her husband, invited us to dine the following 
night. 

' ' Stewart was silent on the way in moody, 
taciturn, tugging at his crisp mustache. As 
we entered the house he burst out : 
1 170 ] 



461 ~~" 

TWO SAVAGES 



" 'Did you ever see a more beautiful 
woman, Leyden? Jove, what hair! what a 
figure ! ' 

" 'I find the husband more interesting,' 
said I. 'Any white woman would be beautiful 
if one stood her up against the shadow of the 
equator. ' 

"He grunted like a peccary. 'Her husband? 
her proprietor ! it's gross flattery to speak 
of that wreck as her husband. What right 
has a cadaver like that to a wife? A widow 
would be a jolly lot more becoming. What's 
he got to hold her with!' 

" 'A yacht, a title, a good mind and a wed 
ding ring, ' said I. 

" 'Might hold some women,' he growled; 
'can't hold that one,' and he took himself off 
to bed. 

"We went aboard the yacht the following 
night, and I do not think that I have ever 
spent a more disagreeable social evening. 
The Countess was glorious in the most dar 
ing of black decollete gowns. Her great 
[171] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



blue eyes were gleaming like sapphires, and 
her hair put one in mind of the burnished 
copper one sees when the schooner heels 
to the trade-wind. Fancy, Doctor, one of 
those profuse Californians, abundant as 
a cluster of Tokay grapes, thrust close 
against a yellow - haired atavism of the 
Neolithic age like my poor acquaintance 
Stewart. Achl he was drunk before he had 
finished his sherry ; at every sip he tasted the 
subtle perfume of her, and the cup she held 
to him was filled with wine as old as the race 
and as deep as the blue of her sapphire eyes. 
She was receiving, I fancy, as well as giving. 
Achl it was very primitive ! Instead of the 
yacht and the sparkle of the yellow lamp-light 
on the plate and glass there should have been 
a forest and the pale moonlight filtering 
through the boughs of giant hemlocks. . . . 

' ' I looked at the Count, and upon my word, 

Doctor, I saw that he was relishing the thing ! 

more than that, he was enjoying it ! Per 

haps it was the interest of the student; per- 

1 172 ] 



TWO SAVAGES 



haps he was absorbing the warmth of fires 
which no longer kindled on his own hearth. 
At any rate, he was eagerly receptive of this 
spectacle, repellant to me in its unfitness, and 
was drinking it with parted lips, a tinge of 
color in his hollow cheeks, a deep glow in his 
red-brown eyes. There was nothing mali 
cious in his regard; rather, it was the acme 
of benevolence. He caught my eye and smiled 
as he had done the day before. 

"The dinner, which was elaborate, com 
pleted, we adjourned to the quarter-deck, 
where the Count skilfully drew me into a dis 
cussion regarding racial and tribal peculiari 
ties, and I soon found him savant. Soon, and 
to-day I know that it was by express design, 
I became oblivious to our milieu and harked 
back to the era when my science was in its 
infancy, for although myself but a mere col 
lector of those rare things in which science 
properly interests herself, I hold the greatest 
respect for the founders of my craft, who 
were themselves both scientists and collectors. 
1 173 ] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEAKS 



We discussed the early labors of these mas 
ters, until soon I was soaring in heights of 
professional exaltation which made me quite 
oblivious to the other discussion being car 
ried on in the shadow by these two savages, 
whose vigorous young bodies, with their at 
tendant embryonic psychic impulses, were at 
a phase so many thousands of years ahead, or 
perhaps behind, our own epoch of mental au 
tocracy. Here was this woman with the 
beauty, temperament, and principles, no 
doubt, of Helen of Troy, and mind enough to 
go after what she wanted ; Stewart an avatar 
of Jove himself, the sire of all profligates, but 
with mind enough to smirch his classic dual 
ity; myself, all cerebrum, ultra mental and 
analytic, perhaps because my blood was just 
ridding itself of millions of sporulating plas- 
modia; the Count, who had at some time, I 
fancy, swung in the orbits of the lot of us. 
He certainly had the mind, and he had had the 
body before he gave it to his mind to squan 
der, and it seemed to me, as I pulled up sud- 
[174] 



<* - 

1WO SAVAGES 



denly from some peroration and caught the 
expression of his eye as he turned his face to 
mine in the yellow lamp-light, that he was lis 
tening to the echoes of an early anthem and 
found them sweet even at the cost of his so- 
called honor! 

"I was glad when the time came for us to 
leave, for I could see that between the wine 
and the woman Stewart was fast shedding 
his restraint. There was a cut to his voice, a 
fierce, deviltry in the ring of his laughter, and 
I have seen men shot for less than the expres 
sion of his eyes. At first it appeared that the 
Countess had an eye for her husband; then, 
seeing nothing but indulgence in his aristo 
cratic face, she had yielded gradually to the 
fascinations of the hour, until one could see 
that she had quite lost the focus of her con 
ventional perspective. You see, Doctor, she 
was not a high-bred woman, so that she was 
quite untrammeled by the instincts which 
come of long generations of culture. The 
only thing which held her in check was the 
1 175 I 



THE MOUNTAIN' OF FEAES 



fear of jeopardizing her official position as 
the wife of an invalid millionaire nobleman, 
but, seeing that he found only diversion in 
her coquetries, she gradually yielded to the 
potent attractions beside her, until I do not 
believe that she realized how ridiculously 
naked her emotions had become. It was evi 
dent that Stewart was holding her hand be 
neath the table, and he was sitting so close 
that their knees touched. It was very primor 
dial! and all of the while the Count was 
talking easily and with an expression which 
seemed to say: 'Dear, innocent children 
what a pleasing spectacle is youth and 
ardor ! ' 

"I was glad when the time came for us to 
leave, as I am a simple old bushman, Doctor, 
and I found the spectacle embarrassing. 

"The following day Stewart had the Count 
and Countess to luncheon, and after a very 
well-ordered repast asked if they would enjoy 
a drive into the country. 

" 'You would enjoy it,' said the Count to his 
[ 176 ] 



TWO SAVAGES 



wife. 'Myself, I dread the dust and the heat. 
Go with Mr. Stewart, if you wish' his smile 
was nothing short of angelic as he said this 
'and I will remain and talk with Dr. Ley den, 
if he will permit me.' 

' * The dark blue eyes of the Countess swept 
upward, and as they met the cold gleam in 
Stewart's she turned her face from us, but I 
could see the crimson creeping to the tip of her 
ear, partly hid by the mass of her hair. Stew 
art nodded indifferently and ordered his pony 
and chaise. 

''When they had gone the Count turned to 
me. His fine face was serene, but there was a 
wistfulness in his lustrous eyes. 

" 'What a delightful thing it is to be young, 
Doctor!' he remarked. Then, in the same 
voice: 'You were telling me last night about 
the Dyaks . . .' 

"It was almost dark when they returned. 
The Countess was very pale and seemed ner 
vous and irritable, while Stewart was in a 
state of suppressed and concentrated fury. 
[177] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



I fancy that he had taken too much for 
granted and got himself well snubbed. At 
any rate, his manners were those of a sulky 
coal-trimmer, and I was much embarrassed. 

"This sort of thing went on for over a 
week; we visited back and forth. Stewart's 
presence put rather a taboo on the yacht as 
far as the garrison was concerned. The 
Count and I became intimate. Stewart pur 
sued the Countess with a sort of cold and 
reckless fury, and while she was certainly 
swayed by his dominant force, it was quite 
evident that he was not progressing. I 
guessed that his roughness, while it fasci 
nated her, at the same time aroused her an 
tagonism. After all, Doctor, I am not sure 
but that passion provides its anti-toxine in a 
temper. I have no doubt they fought like 
cats ; at any rate the strain began to tell upon 
the Countess. One could see that she was 
growing haggard. Then one fine day they 
disappeared ! 

"I was breakfasting alone when Count 
[178] 



TWO SAVAGES 



Asquin rushed into the room, weeping and 
wringing his hands, quite beside himself with 
grief and shock. 

' * ' They have gone ! ' he cried. ' M. Stewart 
and my wife! They have fled in one of the 
pearling yawls!' 

" 'I am very sorry for you,' said I, 'but I 
cannot say that I am surprised. ' 

* 'He did not seem to hear me ; he wrung his 
hands and the tears ran down his sallow 
cheeks. 

" 'I am desolated!' he wailed. 'Was there 
ever such ingratitude? But think of my in 
dulgence ! my consideration ! the unselfish 
ness of my behavior!' 

" 'My dear fellow,' said I, 'you are quite 
incomprehensible! As a man of the world, 
could you not see that Stewart was madly in 
love with the Countess ' 

" ''And she with him!' he cried. 'What 

could have been more evident ? But why this 

flight? Did she not have everything heart 

could desire? Has her single wish been un- 

1 179 ] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



fulfilled? Only yesterday I bought her a 
pearl of Stewart for twenty thousand 
francs. How could she so deceive me!' 
Upon my word, Doctor, he yelped like a 
coyote ! 

" 'And have you lived all of this time,' I 
interrupted, quite out of patience with the old 
fool, 'and not discovered that yachts and 
pearls and kindness do not count for every 
thing with a beautiful woman like the Coun 
tess when - ' 

" 'But you do me injustice!' he protested. 
1 Of course, I saw that she desired M. Stewart 
for her lover' he mopped his eyes 'it was 
most natural that she should! One does not 
retain his youth forever, Doctor his voice 
was deprecating. 'Stewart is a charming 
fellow handsome, dashing, libertin. Few 
women could resist him. But since she so 
much desired him, why in heaven's name did 
she not take him, instead of growing pale and 
maigre and finally bolting off on a stinking 
oyster boat! I ask you, my friend, was not 
[180] 



46ft ' ' ' ' - 

TWO SAVAGES 



my attitude most obviously that of mari com 
plaisant?' 

"Doctor, I got up without a word and lit 
my big china pipe, and as I struck the head of 
the match against the wall I felt tempted to 
strike my own head after it. I felt like a fool. 
The whole thing became so obvious should 
have been so obvious from the very start 
and yet, here these two young savages had 
run away because it seemed the only thing to 
do, when they might just as well have re 
mained and cheered the soul of the poor old 
Count, to say nothing of enjoying his hospi 
tality ! Here again was I myself blaming the 
Count for an infatuated old cuckold and he, 
the only really logical and sensible person in 
the whole affair, wailing beside his empty 
cage! 

"Then the humor of the thing struck me 
and I almost laughed outright. It was so 
ridiculous, and such a joke on the runaways, 
who were cooped up in a little fifty-foot pearl 
ing yawl or stowed away in a Nipa hut in 
[181] 



THE MOUNTAIN' OF FEARS 



some little island, when they might have been 
so comfortable ! 

" 'Did you ever explain your sentiments 
regarding this affair to the Countess?' I in 
quired. 

" 'Doctor!' he protested, 'one cannot be 
indelicate! Certainly not! Could she not 
have inferred it from my behavior ? ' 

" 'I am afraid,' said I, 'that her inferences 
were less flattering. Mine were permit me 
to apologize.' 

"He began to yelp again. 'She was so 
beautiful! so interesting such a typical 
American woman a frank and ignorant 
young savage ! It was a joy to be with her, 
Doctor ; a joy to watch the primitive workings 
of her mind and her little efforts at decep 
tion I found adorable. She was trans 
parent as a naughty child - ' He began 
to blubber. 

" 'She appears to fcave possessed certain 
rudiments of guile,' I replied. 'You have 
taken too much for granted. A Parisienne 
[182] 



would have understood; the ethical situation 
was too delicate for an American; she was 
too narrow-minded to combine adultery and 
domestic tranquillity.' 

11 'They are so crude, these Americans!' 
he wailed. * So crude ! ' 

"An extraordinary situation, Doctor, and 
yet reasonable when one pauses to consider. 
The Count was highly esthetic; his wife 
charmed him in really a very elevated way; 
he enjoyed her beauty, her society, her bon 
homie, no doubt her care and strength, for she 
was kind-hearted where her passions were not 
concerned ; he may have leaned upon her vig 
orous young vitality. She and the tomb could 
not be pictured in the same frame. He ap 
preciated her; wanted her to be happy; was 
thoroughly good to her, and did not mean 
that because she was tied to a broken invalid 
she should be deprived of the fulness of life. 
An archaic and rather pathetic casuistry, was 
it not? 

"I pondered. 'They are in a small sail- 
[183] 



THE MOUNTAIN' OF FEARS 



boat,' thought I, and glanced at the map of 
the archipelago hanging from the wall. * They 
will, of course, make for Zamboanga, but on 
the way they are apt to stop at Port Isabella.' 
You know the place, Doctor in Basilan; a 
beautiful spot : the little village, the hot slope 
of open country rolling gradually upward to 
meet the cool forests on the heights ; the late 
sun painting it all golden and shining back 
from the towering boles that form the ram 
parts of the primeval woods? They were 
most apt to be in Basilan. 

" *I think we can find them,' said I. 'There 
should be no great difficulty in coaxing back 
two naughty children with the sweets you 
have to offer. ' 

"He kissed me on both cheeks; then noth 
ing would do but I must go with him; a 
cruise de luxe would set me on my feet, clinch 
the nail of my convalescence. He began to 
plan a touching reconciliation, the little din 
ner which would attend this fete d' amour, 
the wines, the touching speech which he would 
[184J 



TWO SAVAGES 



make, all of which so overcame him that he 
wept upon my shoulder. 

1 'Of course, I promised to go with him; 
one could scarcely do otherwise ; and, indeed, 
Doctor, I had a real esteem for the poor fel 
low, who in many ways had the heart of a 
child. But the excitement of the whole affair 
proved too much for his organically diseased 
heart, and that night he nearly died. 

"His steward came in to tell me that he 
feared his master was moribund, so I got a 
Spanish surgeon and we worked over him 
throughout the night. It was several days 
before he was out of immediate danger, and 
then there came a typhoon, and his captain 
wished to put to sea to ride it out. The yacht 
took the gale like a gull, but altogether it was 
two weeks before the Count was fit to proceed 
on the quest of his errant wife. 

"We left Jolo early in the morning, and 

when I awoke the next day we were lying off 

Port Isabella. I took the gig and went ashore, 

leaving the Count taking digitalis and almost 

1 185 ] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



in a syncope. I was firm in refusing to allow 
him to land, and, to tell the truth, I did not 
much expect to find the couple. Having found 
the local padre, a Mestizo, I asked after the 
fugitives. 

* l ' Yes, ' he said, * they were here, but they 
have gone, blessed be the name of the Virgin ! 
A pair of devils with apologies to the Senor 
if he should be so unfortunate as to be a 
friend. Myself, I believe them to be quite 
mad. First they would quarrel, then they 
would kiss then they would quarrel again. 
Never have I seen so many quarrels nor so 
much kissing, ' he added, thoughtfully. 

" 'When did they leave?' I asked. 

" 'But three days ago; St. Christopher 
grant that they do not return ! He was a devil 
a white devil, this man they were both 
devils.' He shuddered. 'The kissings were 
growing less and the quarrels more. The 
night before they left she came flying to the 
convent and begged for an asylum. I was 
tempted, Senor, for she was very beautiful, 
[186] 



like the women of Paris, where I was edu 
cated, and a poor priest grows weary of noth 
ing but native women but I thought of this 
purple-eyed devil and refused her sanctuary. 
It was fortunate, for as we were discussing it 
he came up and ordered her to return to the 
house which they were occupying. I do not 
know by what powers she cursed him, but it 
must have been very terrible, for he seized 
her by the shoulder and thrashed her with a 
bamboo until she howled like a beaten 
bitch. 

" 'I have no doubt it did her a world of 
good,' I answered. In fact, Doctor, this was 
the most cheering intelligence which I had 
received. I began to believe that the Provi 
dence which had ordered these things was not 
unwise. 

11 'The Senor is correct,' replied the priest, 
gravely, 'for when I passed the house on the 
way to mass they were on the verandah, and 
she was crouching at his feet, with her head 
upon his knee. There is nothing like a bam- 
[187] 



THE MOUNTAIN' OF FEARS 



boo shoot for a bad-tempered woman, no mat 
ter how beautiful,' he added, thoughtfully. 

"I returned to the schooner and told the 
Count I thought that we would find them in 
Zamboanga ; I told him also of the discipline 
which his wife was under. He looked pensive. 

11 'Perhaps it will do her no harm,' said he. 
' She is strong as a young donkey, and it may 
be well for her to lick the paint off her toy.' 

"You see, Doctor, he did not love this 
woman in any sense, conjugal or paternal. 
He was grieved at her loss, as one might be 
at the loss of a pretty and interesting pet 
a Persian cat and he was determined to get 
her back, no matter how large the reward he 
was compelled to offer. When he got her he 
might confine, but not punish her. Stewart 
really was far the more practical of the two. 

"Early the following morning we reached 
Zamboanga, and hardly had the anchor 
splashed when a boat from the shore shot 
alongside, and, to my utter amazement whom 
should I see in the stern but Stewart himself. 
[188] 



TWO SAVAGES 



* ' The Count, who was below, sent word ask 
ing him to descend, which he did, with a curt 
salutation to me. He was a blackguard of 
direct methods, was Stewart, employing the 
weight of his vitality to project his purpose 
and driving it to the mark with sheer physical 
force ; with him logic filled the place of imagi 
nation. 

* ' He entered that cabin and confronted the 
outraged husband precisely as if their rela 
tive situations had been reversed certainly 
a cool hand, utterly fearless and indifferent 
to possible redress. 

"The Count regarded him mildly. I was 
amazed at his composure. 

" 'I suppose you are looking for your wife,' 
said Stewart, bluntly. 

" 'Monsieur is correct,' replied the Count, 
politely, but I saw a shadow cross his face. 
It was evident that his sensitive nature found 
the other's manner offensive. 

" 'Then I'll fetch her back,' said Stewart. 
'She won't come without.' 
[189] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



" 'I am. pained,' murmured the Count, 
gently, but I could see the pupils of his red 
dish-brown eyes dilate. One could not con 
ceive of the man in a rage; yet he looked 
quietly dangerous. 'Is it that the Countess 
fears my anger my reproaches?' His griz 
zled eyebrows were lifted in concern. 

' ' Stewart gave a laugh of such coarse bru 
tality that one longed to kick him. 

" 'No/ he said, contemptuously, 'hardly! 
I fancy she's taken a bit of a liking to me.' 
There was no braggadocio mixed with his 
brutality, Doctor; in fact, he colored as he 
said this and seemed embarrassed. I believe 
that he was telling the truth. 

" 'In that case,' replied the Count, thought 
fully, and his face resumed its former expres 
sion of indulgence, 'why do you not return 
with her?' He leaned back in his chair, 
brought the tips of his fingers together, rested 
his chin on the indices and looked cordially 
at Stewart, who was staring at him in angry 
bewilderment. 'You have been acting under 
[190] 



TWO SAVAGES 



a misconception, Mr. Stewart. I find you 
agreeable ; you have done much to relieve my 
ennui; besides this, you appear to be neces 
sary to the contentment of Madame the Coun 
tess.' He was putting Stewart with the 
servants, you see, Doctor, or lower. 'Go 
fetch the Countess,' he continued, briskly, 
'and we will forget this folly; we will take 
our dear friend Dr. Leyden to Singapore. If 
it is that you cannot afford to lose the time 
from your affairs, I will make you my secre 
tary at a salary of your own choosing.' 

"Stewart for the moment was stricken 
dumb, too utterly amazed to speak ; then the 
blood came pouring into his florid face and 
his eyes narrowed to mere slits and then I 
grieve to say that all of his blackguardism 
came ripping out. He cursed the Count, the 
Countess, the schooner, himself; in fact, he 
gave such an exhibition of savage and un 
bridled rage as I have never seen before but 
once. You see, Doctor, the man was suffi 
ciently intelligent to appreciate that he was 
[191] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



several very undesirable things a scoundrel, 
an ass, and an object, as it appeared to him, 
of such utter contempt to this French noble 
man as to be quite beneath his resentment 
and he felt that when a man's behavior 
crawled beneath the contempt of a French 
man he was quite a way down ! As Stewart 
read it, and I wonder to this day if he was 
right, he represented a toy to be purchased 
for the amusement of a pet a sort of sub- 
plaything. 

"As all of this struck Stewart in a sort of 
final, knockout insult he leaped up so suddenly 
as to capsize his chair and rushed from the 
cabin, a stream of curses standing out behind 
him like the tail of a comet. 

"I glanced at the Count to see how he had 
stood the shock of the interview, and, would 
you believe it, Doctor, his face wore the flush 
of actual health and there was an entirely new 
glow in the depths of his lustrous eyes. His 
valet was standing at his elbow, and he leaned 

back and said a quick word, which I did not 
[192] 



46* = 

TWO SAVAGES 



catch. The man slipped into the pantry and 
I heard him skipping up the ladder to the 
deck. 

''The Count looked at me. 'The canaille!' 
he said. 'I knew that he was theoretically a 
scoundrel, but I did not suspect that he was 
the low-bred pig which he has proved him 
self. He once told me that his father was a 
lord ; if so, his mother must have been a fish 
wife! . . . Ah!' 

"I sprang to my feet, for there came from 
above the sounds of a most terrific struggle, 
the impact of wicked blows, hoarse bellows of 
rage ; then there was a crash, followed by si 
lence, save for labored breathings. 

" 'Sit down, Doctor, I beg of you!' ex 
claimed the Count, and there was a note of 
apology in his voice. 'It has seemed best to 
me to detain this fellow until we are able to 
obtain custody of the Countess. A deplorable 
state of affairs ' he spread both hands palm 
downward in front of him 'but what is one to 
do 1 Have I not offered this young man every 
1 193 ] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



courtesy every hospitality? Yet you have 
heard his insults. Evidently he came aboard 
because he was anxious to be rid of the Coun 
tess.' (It is my private belief, Doctor, that 
the scoundrel had some design of selling her 
back to her husband.) 'He has taxed my for 
bearance excessively ' 

' ' l What shall you do with him ! ' I inquired. 

' 'He shrugged his shoulders and made a 
wave of the hand. 'I do not know that is 
immaterial; the important thing is to secure 
my wife. Is it too much to ask you to go in 
and look for her, my dear Doctor ! ' 

"I went in, of course, but in the meantime 
she had learned that Stewart had gone off to 
the schooner, and, fearing violence for him at 
the hands of her husband, she had gone out 
herself. When I returned the situation was 
interesting. Madame was confined to her 
room in a state of frantic and screaming de 
fiance ; Stewart was double-ironed in the laza- 
rette, and, although I did not see him again, I 
learned afterwards that he had not been over 
[194] 



TWO SAVAGES 



gently handled by the sailors, and the Count 
was sipping absinthe in the saloon and lis 
tening to the ravings of his wife with an ex 
pression of amused indulgence. 

" 'But listen to her, Doctor,' he observed, 
gently stroking his gray imperial. 'Primitive 
woman howling for her mate ; Eve, haled back 
from outer darkness, screaming to Adam, 
whose admittance is denied. My faith! she 
is more beautiful than ever although,' and 
his brow clouded, 'bearing the marks of ill 
usage.' He arose and began to slowly pace 
the beam of the saloon; his scholarly face 
seamed in thought, the lustre gone from his 
eyes. It was evident that he was thinking 
deeply. From the other side of the after 
bulkhead came the short, angry sobs of the 
Countess. He listened for an instant, and at 
the sound of a sudden little snarl of rage he 
slowly shook his head and smiled. 

" 'Interesting, Doctor, is it not? It would 
be beautiful in a way, primevally beautiful 
an idyll of the callow world when the rocks 
[ 195 ] 



THE MOUNTAIN' OF FEARS 



were jagged like molten lead thrown into 
water, the vegetation chiefly fungoid, and it 
was necessary to clip the wings of one's 
horned cattle. But for the man he is a late, 
mongrel, low-grade production, with merely 
a few primitive impulses. ' He paused to pon 
der. Madame 's sobs continued rhythmically, 
broken now and then by a little 'gr'r'r' pure 
rage the sounds which babies make when 
too angry to scream. 

" 'Oh, these children it is hard to know 
what course to take.' The Count turned to 
me in his perplexity. 'As far as this man is 
concerned, I suppose that the best thing would 
be to give him a good flogging and let him 
go eh, Doctor?' 

" ' A flogging !' I echoed, with a sort of hor 
ror. 

" 'Why not? He is not a gentleman. He 
has endangered my life, which I forgive ; he 
has seduced my wife, for which I make due 
allowance ; he has insulted me to my face, for 
which I do not bear malice; but he is co- 
[196] 



48*' 

TWO SAVAGES 



naille, which makes it impossible for him to 
do all of these things which one might forgive 
in a gentleman. He uses the wrong sort of 
profanity; he chastises his mistress with his 
fists instead of his wit ; he forgets his dignity 
before my servants; when disarmed he dis 
gorged a knife and he an Englishman! 
Br'r'rgh! he is a nauseous animal. Let him 
have a few lashes and be set ashore.' 

"Perhaps I was wrong, Doctor, but I could 
not forget the rascal 's care of me when I was 
ill. I told the Count flatly that I would not 
permit it, and when he proved obstinate told 
him outright that to flog Stewart he would 
first have to use violence towards me. He 
broke down and wept at the bare suggestion 
of this, commemorated my treatment and care 
of him when he was ill, and then embraced me 
and swore that he loved me like a brother, and 
in the same breath gave orders that Stewart 
be immediately set ashore, with no further 
ill-treatment. 

' ' Stewart was accordingly landed and went 
1 197 ] 



THE MOUNTAIN' OF FEARS 



his way in peace. The Countess got over her 
fit of temper in about an hour, ate a hearty 
dinner, drank several glasses of champagne, 
cheered up, and when I retired she was sitting 
on the arm of her husband's chair and, as 
sured of his unqualified forgiveness, was re 
lating her adventure, while he chuckled to 
himself like a mischievous schoolboy. 

"The savage was back on the reservation; 
glad to be there; fed, forgiven, petted and 
quite content to be good until the next 
time." 



[198] 




TWO GENTLEMEN 

OOK at that cat, Doctor," said 
Leyden, "but do not let her see 
that you are looking. There! 
did you see the beast crouch, 
and glance at us, and then 
begin to wash its face ! ' ' 

I glanced at the ship's cat an interesting 
beast, as are most ship 's cats, either because 
one has more time to study their actions, or 
because a limited sphere develops the ani 
mal's ingenuity. Some one had brought 
aboard a tulu-pial bird and hung its cage over 
the hand steering-gear, where the pineapples 
are strung out to ripen. The cat had lost no 
time in locating the bird and was busy meas 
uring distances when we interrupted. 

"That cat," said Leyden, "would be typi 
fied by a sneak-thief among men. Do you 
know, Doctor, I believe that domestic animals, 
[199] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



like men, have their grades of honesty. Have 
you not seen a finely bred dog of high courage 
subdue an animal impulse which he feels to be 
degrading?" 

I had observed this thing, but, seeing that 
the subject had suggested something to Ley- 
den's mind, I merely nodded. Few men had 
looked as deeply into the nature of all things 
made as had this keen-sensed Teuton col 
lector, who seemed equally at home in any 
part of the civilized or savage world. He had 
at times played the same quiet, modest part 
in the founding of empires as in the advance 
ment of science ; his friends were to be found 
from the palm tree to the palace, and I fear 
that a great many of his enemies were dead. 

' ' I had. once an occasion to watch a striking 
case of noblesse oblige in an animal," Ley- 
den continued. ' ' I would not tell the story if it 
were a simple animal yarn, as such tales are, 
as a rule, tiresome and untruthful. This story 
concerns people, principally, but as those 
upon whom it reflects discreditably are dead 
[200] 



TWO GENTLEMEN 



with certain others there is no reason why 
it should not be told. 

* ' This was a good many years ago, Doctor, 
when the steamer transportation in the Pa 
cific was less efficient than to-day. I had en 
gaged passage from 'Frisco to Samoa on a 
schooner which was owned and captained by 
the son of one of those early blackguards who 
used to land their crews upon an island full 
of harmless cannibals, show them the way of 
civilization, demonstrate the wickedness of 
their present lives, and then go off and leave 
them to infect each other with constitutional 
disease in the place of eating one another. 
I hope there is an interesting corner of hell 
reserved for all such! Our captain, whose 
name was Deshay, was the frequent hand 
some outcrop of a vicious sire ; his father had 
eloped with his mother, who was the half- 
caste wife of a missionary in the Marquesas 
and one of the most beautiful women I ever 
saw. Later, Deshay, senior, had made a good 
bit of money in the island trade, sent his son 
[ 201 ] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



to England to be educated, and while the boy 
was there the parents had been lost in a ty 
phoon. 

' ' When I went down to the schooner on the 
morning of her sailing date I found aboard 
her a young man of very pleasing appearance, 
who introduced himself as Claud Dillingham 
and told methat we were to be shipmates. 

" 'You are related to Claud Dillingham, 
the owner of the Great Bear Mine?' I asked. 
This Dillingham was a Virginia gentleman, 
who had made a great fortune in mining 
claims, and was at that time the richest man 
on 'the Slope.' 

11 'I am his son,' said he; and as he was 
speaking, a magnificent bloodhound walked 
from behind the house, his fine, velvety head 
raised, the delicate nostrils twitching and the 
dreamy, half-closed eyes reinforcing the more 
potent sense of smell. 

" 'What a magnificent animal!' said I. 

" 'Yes,' he answered. 'I am taking him 
with me ; he is so intelligent that he soon ac- 
[202] 



TWO GENTLEMEN 



customs himself to new surroundings; be 
sides, he would die if I left him behind. ' 

"I remarked that I had heard of dogs being 
devoted to their masters to that extent. There 
was no skepticism in my voice, but he was so 
sensitive that he flushed like a girl. 

" 'I speak from experience,' said he, quick 
ly. ' I once left him for a fortnight and then 
had to return, as they wrote me that he had 
not eaten since I left. When I got back he 
was as thin as a coyote. I always took him 
with me after that.' 

"We talked together for a little while, and 
it did not take me long to discover that the 
master was as thoroughbred as the hound; 
in fact, he impressed one as a trifle too finely 
bred iwbred, possibly. He was too deli 
cately charming six feet in height, grace 
fully and slenderly built, very fair, with the 
pure complexion and blue eyes of a very 
pretty girl. I almost laughed when he pres 
ently confided in me that he was taking the 
voyage in the hope of overcoming the liquor 
I 203 ] 



THE MOUNTAIN' OF FEARS 



habit. I suspected that there was a girl in 
the case that Claud was in love and had con 
ceived that he was in danger of becoming ad 
dicted to the vice because he sometimes drank 
a glass of beer when in college. 

"As we were chatting together the hound 
walked suddenly to me and raised his hand 
some head as if inviting a caress. 

" 'That is unusual,' said Claud. 'His re 
ception of people is often embarrassing. He 
will not go near Captain Deshay. He is too 
polite to growl ; he simply gets out of the way, 
but he can't keep his hair from bristling a 
little.' 

* ' I asked Claud presently if he had met the 
mate, and he said that he had not, that he 
had not even seen him, which I thought rather 
singular. Claud told me that we had another 
fellow-passenger, a Professor Lentz, a scien 
tist, not a mere collector like myself. He 
added that Professor Lentz was below, en 
gaged in storing a wagon-load of instruments 
for recording everything from a falling star 
[204] 



TWO GENTLEMEN 



to his last bottle of beer. A little while later 
I met him, and he proved to be a genial, if 
somewhat secretive, old crank, who appar 
ently had some complex theory regarding 
ocean currents which he was afraid that some 
of us might try to steal. 

"Captain Deshay came aboard at noon, 
and with him came a squat, heavily bearded 
individual, who proved to be the mate. De- 
shay himself was a well-educated man, of 
very finished manners and strikingly hand 
some in a rather animal way. The casual 
observer would have described his face as 
strong, but it was not it was well-featured; 
but he had a lumpish jaw, which is different 
from a masterful jaw, and his eyes were petu 
lant rather than determined. His manner was 
inclined to be loud, authoritative and with a 
coarse bonhomie always repellant to me. The 
most assertive thing about him was a big 
voice, and a big voice is scarcely ever asso 
ciated with cold-blooded courage; it belongs 
to the blustering, bullying kind. 
1205], 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



"It was at once evident to me that Deshay 
was very nervous about something; we were 
anchored half a mile out, and I noticed that 
he frequently scanned the water-front while 
getting under way. His crew appeared to be 
the scrapings of the wharves, a sulky-looking 
lot of ragamuffins, but Deshay seemed to 
have them well in hand. 

"As the weather had been cold and raw, we 
three passengers went below, and as soon as 
we got under way Deshay left the deck to his 
mate and joined us. He called at once for 
spirits and the steward brought whiskey. I 
noticed an expression of surprised resent 
ment in Claud's face at this proceeding; it 
appears that Deshay had given him to under 
stand that he did not drink himself and that 
he did not expect any other passengers, and 
therefore he might never be subjected to 
temptation. I was not aware of this at the 
time; nevertheless, I knew that there was a 
struggle going on. You are aware, Doctor, 
of the faculty possessed by certain people of 
I 206 ] 



TWO GENTLEMEN 



placing themselves in a condition receptive 
to the more potent impulses of another ; it is 
an inherent faculty, but can by training be 
developed to an amazing extent a faculty 
with which women are more generously en 
dowed than men, but in most cases a woman 
possessing this will depend upon it to the ex 
clusion of logic ; more than that, she abuses it, 
overworks it, lazily attempts to make it do 
the work of her mind to a point where it is no 
longer accurate, hence a negative benefit. A 
diplomat must possess it ; the best diplomats 
develop it, just as a great musician of rich 
natural, talent must develop this by years of 
arduous practice ; perhaps an explorer or col 
lector like myself may possess it even most of 
all, because he must be a trained observer, 
which enables .him to buttress the psychic and 
the mental with a precise faculty for grasping 
subtle physical signs. 

"Therefore, Doctor, in the brief moment 
in which the whiskey was brought I knew that 
Claud felt himself to be tricked, and I was 
[207] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



curious to see what he would do about it, be 
cause, in spite of his effeminacy, my instinct 
told me that he was not weak. The whiskey 
was set upon the table. Lentz helped himself ; 
I did likewise, and as I did so I heard Claud's 
feet scuffle a trifle on the rug, and knew that 
his impulse was to arise and leave the table. 
I knew that he was staring indignantly at 
Deshay ; there was a reflection of this look in 
the lurking gleam of contempt in Deshay 's 
dark eyes and the sardonic lines at the cor 
ners of his mouth, and when he spoke, in the 
pleasantest voice which one can conceive, the 
words and the expression which accompanied 
them was the drop in excess needed to crys 
tallize the solution of my dislike and distrust 
of Deshay. 

" 'Oh, come, Dillingham, ' said he, lightly, 
'we all know that you're on a swear-off, but 
just a glass for l>on voyage will do you no 
harm. Once we're under way you can settle 
down to a life of undiluted virtue say when.' 

"He reached across the table, decanter in 
I 208 1 



TWO GENTLEMEN 



hand, and began to pour the liquor slowly into 
Claud's glass, while I with difficulty repressed 
an inclination to knock the vessel out of his 
hand not that I laid much importance on 
Claud's breaking his resolution, but because 
he was in danger of breaking it not through 
his own will, and I knew that if he sagged at 
this moment he would have an up-hill fight 
to get back his own while aboard that schoon 
er, and the agonizing part of it all to me 
was that Deshay was not a strong character; 
he was a pine post painted to look like gran 
ite, and Claud had not enough knowledge of 
men to recognize the paint. 

" 'No, thank you, Captain,' said Claud, in 
a voice of such weak determination that it 
positively brought the blood to my face. ' I 'm 
off for good, ' he said, and threw the inflection 
on the wrong words, as a man will when try 
ing to show a determination which is lacking 
in him. 

' ' ' Of course you are, ' said Deshay, in a big, 
good-humored voice which seemed to jar the 
[ 209 ] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



glasses, 'but the swear-off starts with the voy 
age, and a voyage out of 'Frisco is not begun 
until you get through the Golden Gate. Come, 
now, matey, just one to bring us fair winds.' 
One cannot describe the large persuasion of 
his tone. 

" 'Eeally, I'd rather not/ replied Claud, 
with a school-boy squirm. It was a beastly 
spectacle, Doctor an immoral spectacle ; had 
Deshay been overcoming the scruples of a 
woman it would have been less offensive, be 
cause such an act is prompted by animal im 
pulse, whereas this was purely Satanic the 
violation of an unproved entity. I was 
strongly tempted to interfere, but many years 
of contact with all sorts of people have so 
confirmed me in the habit of minding my own 
business that very often I do not interfere 
when perhaps I should. 

" 'Oh, nonsense,' said Deshay, and there 
was in his full voice the slightest hint of the 
imperative, and his eyes, as they fixed them 
selves on Claud, were insolently authority- 
[210], 



TWO GENTLEMEN 



tive. If he had looked at me in that way I 
should have planted my fist in his face ; with 
Claud I think that it was less lack of will than 
the obedience of a hyper-sensitive mind to a 
dominant suggestion. At any rate, Deshay 
poured out some Scotch and added some 
water, and Claud raised the glass, drained it, 
then sprang suddenly to his feet and left the 
saloon, nor did I see him again until dinner 
time, and, Doctor, I knew that from that mo 
ment this brute Deshay, whom I correctly es 
timated as a creature of animal cunning, utter 
lack of principle and an amazing effrontery 
substituting strength, had one of his coarse, 
clumsy paws on the gold bags of Claud Dil- 
lingham, senior, and, barring accident, would 
squeeze out many a yellow coin before he al 
lowed the son to escape from his clutches. Do 
not misunderstand me, Doctor; this free 
booter was simply after gold. 

' ' The following morning I happened to be 
talking with Deshay, for at sea dislike of a 
shipmate is no reason for not getting what 
[211] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



entertainment there is in him, and while we 
were talking Claud came up and requested a 
few words with him. 

" 'Anything personal?' I asked. Claud 
hesitated for a moment, apparently embar 
rassed. 

' ' ' Oh, no, ' said he, and went on, stammer 
ing like a school-boy who had forgotten his 
recitation. 'You see, Doctor Leyden,' said 
he, ' when I engaged my passage I was afraid 
that I might be seasick, so I made an arrange 
ment with Captain Deshay by which he was 
to drop me at Honolulu if I wished it. He 
he told me that there were to be no other 
passengers/ " 

" 'But you are not seasick, are you?' said I. 

" 'No/ he answered, 'but I am I am I 
am frowesick.' Upon my word, he gulped like 
a little girl the first day in school and his blue 
eyes filled with tears ; he could not have been 
under twenty years of age. 

" 'I do not think that you have dealt quite 
fairly with me, Captain,' said he, in a voice 
[212] 



46* ' ' '- " 

TWO GENTLEMEN 

wliich he tried to make cold and assertive, but 
would have been only contemptible if one had 
not been sorry for him and then as he looked 
at our faces and saw scant sympathy in' 
either, he crumbled. 

" ' To tell the truth, Captain, ' he continued, 
with a rather nervous laugh, 'I'm afraid that 
I've lost my nerve ; I'm sick of the voyage al 
ready and want to get back home. Of course, 
I'll defray any additional expense due to tak 
ing you out of your course,' he concluded, 
with a sort of shy eagerness. 

' ' * Oh, come, old fellow, ' said Deshay, coax- 
ingly, and clapped him on the shoulder. * The 
first twenty-four hours ' 

" 'Look out for your dog !'I cried suddenly, 
for as Deshay 's hand fell upon Claud's shoul 
der I had happened to glance at Dixie. The 
dog was standing quietly enough at his mas 
ter's heel, and at Deshay 's action had made 
none of the usual canine expressions of dis 
pleasure, and it was this absence which made 
him so alarming, for as I glanced at his great, 
[213] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



dark, intelligent eye it seemed filled with such 
a smouldering, slumbering intensity of hate 
that it gave me a positive start. The fine, 
silky hair was not even ruffled, there was not 
the slightest twitch to the velvet lips, but I 
could see that every muscle of the beautifully 
moulded body was tense as our weather 
shrouds and there was a fine quiver to the 
strong flanks. Have you ever, Doctor, closely 
watched a woman who is married to a man 
she hates, loathes, despises, as her husband 
enters the room? Perhaps he is a plausible 
brute who only shows the cloven hoof after 
he has shot the bolt of her bedroom door ; no 
one else may guess it unless one watches the 
wife. The dilatation of the pupil, the faintest 
quiver of the nostrils, the little shiver 
Dixie had all of these, but, as Claud 
had said, he was too self-contained, too 
much of a gentleman, to further reveal his 
emotions. 

"I could see Claud shrivel at Deshay's fa 
miliarity. One guessed that he longed to 
[214] 



TWO GENTLEMEN 



throw off the man's hand, which still clutched 
his shoulder good-humoredly, but he was too 
sensitive, too fearful of giving offense, not 
through any liking for the man, but because 
it seemed gauche, boorish, and would fill the 
air with a sort of rough impulse, shocking to 
his fine sensitiveness. No doubt he had suf 
fered at times from rebuffs to his own timid 
advances, and had not enough knowledge of 
the world and men to keep from putting a 
coarse, thick-skinned brute like Deshay in his 
own class of emotions. 

"His class ach! the nervous sensibili 
ties of those two were about as similar as 
those of a Kentucky thoroughbred and a Gal 
apagos turtle ! There are some men who can 
never get it through their heads that the only 
way to hurt another man's feelings is with a 
club. 

"When I spoke, Claud glanced down at 
Dixie, and he saw the danger in the animal's 
eyes, to which Deshay was quite blind. 

"'Dixie!' said Claud, reprovingly; that 
I 215 ] 



THE MOUNTAIN' OF FEARS 



was all, but Dixie understood and his beauti 
ful head dropped contritely. 

" 'Oh, Dixie's all right/ said Deshay, care 
lessly, and, will you believe it, he swung down 
and took the dog's two forepaws, raised him 
up on his hind legs, while he pulled his ears 
playfully, and, taking the sensitive muzzle in 
his coarse hand, shook it back and forth ! Ach! 
I have never been so overcome with admira 
tion for the self-control of any living creature 
as I was for its amazing exhibition by that 
bloodhound ! One saw him shudder, half close 
his eyes, as if in a disgust too deep for any 
expression. I really believe, Doctor, that the 
dog and master were at the psychological in 
stant of Deshay 's caress possessed of pre 
cisely the same emotions. Do you know, I be 
lieve that the hound accepted the human ani 
mal's familiarity less through discipline than 
a high-minded sense of courtesy which for 
bade his rejecting overtures which had the 
semblance of good will, for at first Deshay 
actually liked Dixie, and was unable to see 



TWO GENTLEMEN 



that the dog had loathed him from the 
start. 

* * Deshay turned to Claud. l There 's a good 
chap,' he said; 'you don't mind sticking it out 
to Samoa, do you, now?' 

" 'I'm sorry,' began Claud. 

' ' ' Oh, come, ' said Deshay, and again there 
was in his voice that imperative note which 
had struck me so unpleasantly the day before. 
'You can't tell yet whether you're going to 
like the cruise or not; you will begin to enjoy 
it in a couple of days you know you will.' 
He fastened his lustrous eyes fixedly on the 
seraphic blue ones of the boy. 'You know 
you will like it don't you, now?' There was 
in his voice a peremptory assertion. 

" 'Perhaps you are right,' said Claud, and 
looked over the rail. 

" 'Of course I am right,' said Deshay, 
loudly, and clapped him on the shoulder 
again. 'Now, let's have a drink to show 
there's no hard feeling. Steward!' he bel 
lowed down the companionway. 
I 217 ] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



" 'But, look here, Captain/ said Claud, 
feebly, 'you seem to forget that I've given up 
drinking/ 

" 'Not a bit of it,' said Deshay, 'but there's 
a big difference between a man's giving up 
drinking and a man's never taking a drink. 
If you only drink at my suggestion you'll 
never come to any harm. Will you join us, 
Leyden?' 

" 'No, thanks,' I answered. 

" 'Oh, yes, you will,' said Deshay, in his 
large way. 

' ' I shrugged my shoulders and, turning on 
my heel, walked aft. To tell the truth, Doctor, 
although I am a mild-mannered man who will 
make a very great detour to avoid a quarrel, 
I think that just at that moment " 

Eight bells were struck forward, and Ley- 
den paused to hold the stump of his cigar to 
the dial of the taffrail-log. 

"A little more than ten," he muttered; 
"that schooner did better for days on end!" 
He drummed softly with his fingers until I 
[218] 



TWO GENTLEMEN 



grew irritated at his abstraction, which emo 
tion he perceived, for he flicked the stump of 
his cigar into the wake and resumed. 

' ' Doctor, have you ever witnessed the spec 
tacle of a strong will and high courage becom 
ing completely and utterly dominated, less 
through lack of strength than excess of imagi 
nation, by a creature of far inferior qualities, 
but overwhelming impudence? These are the 
conditions which often give the bully his 
amazing autocracy ; his victims are auto-hyp 
notized by the sheer impudence of his asser 
tions, until some day the bubble is pricked by 
an individual more practical and less imagi 
native and the reign of terror is at an end. 
In a week's time Deshay had Claud, and 
Dixie, too, for that matter, as entirely cowed 
and subjugated as if he had broken their 
spirits with a cat-o '-nine-tails, and the har 
rowing part of it was that, in spite of their 
high degree of sensitiveness, neither the dog 
nor the master were weak. I had studied 

Claud and felt his underlying force; he was 
[219] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



of that high-bred, nervous type, vacillating 
in little things, but, deeper, of the resistance 
of chilled steel; like the bulkheads in the 
ward-room of a battle-ship, white and gold 
on the surface, but able to stand the pressure 
of hundreds of tons. If the petty aggressions 
of Deshay had all been combined into a solid 
weight, requiring a forceful resistance, he 
could no more have held Claud than he could 
have held a handful of guncotton detonated 
in his clenched fist ; that is, he could not have 
done so at first, and his animal cunning told 
him this, so that he began by accustoming his 
victim to yield in minor matters until he had 
given him the yielding habit; but as I watched 
the whole thing I was convinced that Deshay 
was too crude a production and too lacking 
in finesse to continue his course successfully, 
and I awaited the denouement with interest. 
Deshay had already shown his lack of clever 
ness by not taking the trouble to conceal the 
aversion that he had come to feel for Dixie, 
and the silent hate of the dog for him was a 
[ 220 ] 



TWO GENTLEMEN 



thing as extraordinary to contemplate as the 
animal's marvellous dignity and self-control. 
Deshay had come to openly maltreat him, but 
not as yet in Claud's presence; he maltreated 
him once in mine, and only once, for I said a 
few words to him, at which he stared into my 
eyes and first blustered and then laughed and 
then went out with a sizzle and we under 
stood one another perfectly. On this occasion 
he had kicked the dog across the deck because 
the poor brute had placed both paws on the 
polished teak rail in a longing effort to dis 
cover land, and the dog had neither yelped nor 
growled nor become abject; he had simply 
walked away, albeit with a slight limp, but 
without the drooping tail and other signs of 
canine dejection. Perhaps you have seen a 
gentleman, Doctor, a fearless man, avoid a 
quarrel thrust upon him by a low fellow, and 
avoid it quietly and without loss of dignity. 
This was Dixie 's behavior. 

"We were not a pleasant party on that 
schooner. I had come to detest Deshay, and 
[221] 



THE MOUNTAIN' OF FEARS 



he knew it; Lentz would no longer speak to 
him ; the old fellow simply grunted when De- 
shay addressed him, as if he considered the 
captain a swine and able to understand the 
language. Claud did not hate him ; he simply 
loathed him, and yet was dominated by him, 
and the same was true of Dixie. The air was 
heavily pregnant with possibilities, and, Doc 
tor, when the denouement finally arrived it 
was as funny as the grin on the face of a 
corpse. Who do you suppose it was that 
pulled out the boat-plug? Why, none other 
than that black-browed humorist of a mate, 
who was, it seems, a murderer escaped from 
the Santa Clara county jail, and who had paid 
Deshay a good price for his billet. 

"We were down in the neighborhood of 
Christmas Island, when we cut in close to 
some other little island; to this day I don't 
know what it was. Our course would trim it 
close, so at Deshay 's suggestion we hove to 
and he and Lentz and Claud, Dixie and myself 
went in with two sailors to pull the boat. Pos- 
[222] 



TWO GENTLEMEN 



sibly it was his plan to get Lentz and me 
ashore and leave us there, but he never had 
the chance, for no sooner had we struck the 
beach than Mister Mate up with his headsails, 
up stick and away ! 

' ' I must have a bizarre sense of humor, for 
I will confess that I dropped in a heap on 
the sand and laughed until the tears came. 
It was such a tremendous joke on the lot of 
us especially upon Deshay. 

' ' Deshay was like a crazy man ; he tore up 
and down the beach and shook his fists and 
raved until his face was blue. He was an edi 
fying sight, and we white people sat in a little 
row in our proscenium box and admired the 
exhibition. You see, he was three-quarters 
white, and that gave him imagination; but 
the other quarter, which should have been 
self-control, was Kanaka, and that knocked 
up the pawls and let his line run off the reel, 
so to speak. 

"We were really badly off, Doctor; the 
island was very small and offered no food 
[223] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



that we could see. There was a small cluster of 
dwarfed palms, and they bore a few immature 
nuts; aside from these trees there was no 
shelter. We had not even a boat-sail. Fortu 
nately there was water on this island brack 
ish, but potable. 

"Deshay pulled himself together after a 
while, but he was savage and morose. 
I managed to get out of him the pleasing news 
that the next island was over one hundred 
miles distant, and probably no better than 
the one which we were on. Fancy our condi 
tion, Doctor! our utter lack of everything 
but bad feeling. All of us, including the two 
sailors who had pulled the boat, hated De- 
shay ; Deshay returned the sentiment ; the two 
sailors, with their mates, had from the first 
been insolent to Claud, of whom they said 
rough things owing to his subjugation by 
Deshay ; and on this, as well as from personal 
causes, both Lentz and I had more than once 
fallen foul of them. Within the last fortnight 

the tedium of the voyage had begun to tell 
[224] 



TWO GENTLEMEN 



upon Leutz, and the old fellow had grown 
peevish and sulky; both of us had incurred 
Deshay 's dislike by having very little to say 
to him. Conceive, then, the delights of the 
first few days of hardship with such a com 
pany. 

"It was, I believe, the morning of the third 
day that I was awakened by hearing Deshay 
cry out : ' Where 's that cursed dog ? ' I rolled 
over and saw that he held in his hand one of 
the heavy oak stretchers of the boat and was 
looking savagely about him. Near by sat 
Claud, his face in his hands. 

"Deshay snarled out: 'Where's that dog, 
you droolin ' baby ? ' 

"Claud mumbled something, without look 
ing up, and then I heard him say : * We haven't 
come to that yet? and he said it with a 
groan, and I could see his face working pain 
fully. 

' ' Deshay walked toward him, talking as he 
went. He said: 'You'll see if we haven't 
when I find the cur, you chicken-livered little 
[225] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEAKS 



milksop!' and at that moment there came 
from up the beach a musical bay which tolled 
out like a church-bell and died lingeringly 
away, to be drowned in the crash of the break 
ers; again this mournful note welled forth, 
rising like the voice of a bell-buoy above the 
roar of the surf, and this time it ended in a 
series of short, excited barks such a bark as 
a hound gives when he has 'treed.' 

" Claud sprang to his feet. 'He's found 
something ! ' he cried, and began to run down 
the beach. Deshay and I followed, and soon 
we came upon Dixie, who was very carefully 
uncovering a nest of new-laid turtle 's eggs. 

" Deshay was for eating his fill then and 
there, but this I would not permit, so we 
gathered them up and carried them back 
to the others, where we proceeded to divide 
them. 

" 'Give Dixie his share,' said I to Deshay, 
who had undertaken the division. 

" 'Give Dixie nothin',' he snarled back at 
me. And then he added: 'Why, you Dutch 
[226] 



TWO GENTLEMEN 



fat-head, d'ye think I'm goin' to give good 
food to a dog ? ' 

"He had carelessly dropped the boat- 
stretcher beside him, and before he could lay 
down the eggs it was in my hand. There is 
an etiquette, Doctor, to be observed even upon 
a desert island, and if Lentz had not grasped 
the other end of the stick I fancy that Dixie 
could have had Deshay's share. 

' ' * Ve must not qvarrel, ' said Lentz ; ' ve haf 
troobles enough alretty. Der hound found 
der eggs ; gif him von or two. ' 

"Deshay growled, but I had frightened 
him, and he did as he was told, giving Dixie 
two of the eggs. The dog ate one of them, the 
other he carried to Claud; I saw Claud give 
it to Deshay. 

"For ten days this thing went on. Every 
day or two Dixie would find a nest of eggs, 
but at the end of that time he could find no 
more, and after two days of hunger Deshay, 
backed by one of the sailors, demanded 
that he be killed. We were all fairly 
[227] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



weak by this time, Deshay being perhaps 
the strongest, because Claud had shared 
his own and the hound's food with him in 
the hope of prolonging the dog's life. In 
spite of this the lad held up wonder 
fully, sustained by his marvellous nervous 
vitality. 

" 'It seems to me that Dixie has earned his 
right to live, ' said Claud, the tears streaming 
from his eyes. 'He has already fed us for ten 
days; but if you all demand that he be 
killed I will not oppose it!' He buried his 
face in his hands. 

" 'Guess you won't !' growled Deshay. 'We 
do demand it ' 

" ' Speak for yourself, you mongrel swine !' 
said I, and added that I would starve before 
I would kill the hound or eat him, either. You 
see, Doctor, to my way of thinking Dixie had 
purchased the human right to die decently, 
like the brave, unselfish gentleman he was. 
Besides, he had the cleanest soul of any, save, 
perhaps, his master. What right had we to 
[228] 



TWO GENTLEMEN 



prolong our lives at the cost of his? Lentz 
felt this. 

" 'I von't eat him/ he said; 'he is vort 
more as me.' 

11 'Ah, what's the use o' killin' 'im?' said 
one of the sailors, a hard specimen whom De- 
shay had picked up on the 'Barbary Coast.' 
*Dawg 'r no dawg, we're all goin' up the 
flue. The quicker the sooner, say I.' 

"The other sailor agreed with Deshay, who 
pulled out his knife and sidled toward the 
hound. If my strength had been equal to it 
I would have opposed him, but a touch of 
fever on top of other hardships had left me 
as weak as a kitten. However, it was unneces 
sary. 

"And then, Doctor, there began a strange 
and savage spectacle. Dixie was by this time 
a hide-wrapped skeleton, yet his strength 
seemed in no way impaired. He was asleep 
by his master's side, but at the stealthy ap 
proach of Deshay he seemed to slide away 
as one drags a rug across a floor. Deshay 
[ 229 ] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



continued to approach at an angle craft 
ily, and still the hound slid away in that pecu 
liar manner, his lustrous brown eyes fastened 
on the man in an agony of doubt and dread, 
which seemed to partly paralyze his move 
ments. Deshay began to wheedle, to whine, 
to talk 'baby -talk' of the 'nice-doggy' type, 
and he actually hid the knife as he might if 
about to murder a man instead of a dog ! Such 
a spectacle, my friend! this gaunt, savage, 
bloodshot, hairy, human animal, far more of a 
beast in all effect than the sad-eyed dog who 
had for days prolonged his worthless life 
this bloodthirsty, literally bloodthirsty hu 
man hyena, crazed at feeling his wretched, life 
slipping through his weakening grip, slink 
ing along that beach in the bright, dewy 
morning, talking baby talk to the hound 
making a disgusting exhibition of his craven 
soul, when he might have been waiting for 
death with the dignity of a gentleman ! 

''Still he slunk and the dog slunk before 
him, his hair bristling less in fear than dis- 
I 230 ] 



TWO GENTLEMEN 



gust, certainly not in anger, for of this emo 
tion there was no trace in the quiver of a lip, 
the echo of a growl, nor in the gleam of the 
beautiful, lustrous eyes. Bather it was a 
sense of deepest shame a shame for his mas 
ter's race! 

"And then the brute in the man tore 
through the thin envelope; he screamed like 
a cat and threw himself at the dog, only to 
sprawl his length on the sand. He sprang to 
his feet and ran braying at the animal, who 
fled down the beach as silently and with the 
even interval of the man's own sinister 
shadow, until Deshay, his strength utterly 
gone, fell face downward on the sand, scream 
ing obscenities. Ach! never have I seen a 
thing more disgusting. 

" 'Dixie will take care of himself,' said I 
to Claud. * He will not be caught napping. ' 

"From that time, Doctor, there began a 

series of psychological phenomena of which 

I was more appreciative afterwards. Up to 

the moment of this shocking outburst of De- 

[231] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



shay, Claud had been in all ways subservient, 
but as he looked upon the contour of this 
man's naked soul and saw its hideously 
dwarfed deformity I observed a peculiar ex 
pression on his face. I think that he was feel 
ing Deshay's shame as if it had been his own 
not through any charity, but through sym 
pathy, which is such an entirely different 
thing. You see, Doctor, Claud was one of 
those hyper-sensitized natures which reflects 
an emotion as a still lake reflects its bank : you 
know the type that which will listen to a 
poorly given address with a sense of deepest 
personal responsibility toward the speaker, 
or will see some person in a conspicuous place 
make a fool of himself and fairly writhe with 
shame as Dixie had done. And do you know, 
I think that for the time the sentiments of 
master and dog toward Deshay were identi 
cal ; the natures of the two were very similar ; 
and I can say no better thing of Claud than 
this. They were two gentlemen, Doctor, gen 
tlemen by birth and breed and associations, 
[232] 



TWO GENTLEMEN 



and they possessed the natural instincts which 
result from generations of these things. 

' 'Left to himself at just that moment, Claud 
would, I believe, have attempted to condone 
Deshay's behavior and to go to the rescue of 
his strangled decency, but it seemed to me that 
the psychological moment had arrived for 
placing matters in their due proportion. You 
see, Doctor, I had about concluded that we 
were all going to die, and I disliked the idea 
of letting Claud die without the opportunity 
of redeeming such manhood as he might pos 
sess, and with this in mind I reached out and 
dragged the veil rather roughly from his eyes. 

" 'And to think,' said I, 'that yonder object 
should be your master you, a gentleman and 
a white man ! ' 

' ' Claud leaped as if I had lashed him across 
the face. 

" 'What!' he cried. 'What what what's 
that you say?' 

" ' It seems to me to be plain enough, ' said 

I. 'Haven't you kow-towed and groveled and 
[ 233 ] 



THE MOUNTAIN' OF FEARS 



beat your forehead before that thing, and 
broken your promise to stop drinking to 
whomever you made that promise for fear 
of that Kanaka thug out there?' 

' ' Claud stared at me stared like a baby 
with his mouth and his big blue eyes wide 
open, and while he stared what little blood 
was left in his wasted body found its way up 
into his face ; at last, it seemed to me, he was 
ashamed on his own account. While he was 
staring at me Deshay came up. 

' ' ' Call your cur, ' he growled. I was vexed 
that he interfered just when he did, as Claud 
in his weakened state had not yet assimilated 
the pre-digested idea which I had fed him. I 
was scarcely normal at the time, Doctor; to 
my mind, the whole thing mattered very lit 
tle; it was like one of those nightmares in 
which one is sub-consciously aware that it is 
really only a dream and acts with delightful 
disregard of consequences. I thought of dying 
as one thinks of waking up, and before wak 
ing up I wanted to see Claud kill Deshay. I 
[ 234 ] 



TWO GENTLEMEN 



knew that he could kill him if he wanted to, 
for all of us had passed the physical limits 
and were living upon our mentalities, and 
Claud's being so much more virile than De- 
shay's, he was just that much more alive; 
yet Deshay was too stupid to discover this, 
although I think that he must have felt it in 
a way. 

' l ' Call your cur ! ' he repeated, but this time 
there was a change in his tone. It reminded 
me of the voice in which Claud had attempted 
to assert himself upon that first day aboard 
the schooner, but in Deshay 's case this irreso 
lution was on his own account; subjective, 
you see not objective, like Claud's. 

"I noticed this and began to laugh, and 
Deshay looked at me sheepishly. It was not 
a pleasant laugh ; one feels sorry, Doctor, for 
a man who sacrifices his self-respect for the 
sake of some one else, but one laughs as I did 
at the man who does so for himself. This was 
the proportion between Claud and Deshay, 

and, although I found it amusing, I was never- 
1235], 



THE MOUNTAIN' OF FEARS 



theless grievously disappointed when I saw 
that Deshay was subtle enough to feel his 
side of the see-saw go down for, as I have 
said, I wanted to see Claud kill him before 
any of us died. 

"As it was, Claud simply ignored his de 
mands and that was a little step toward pre 
ponderance. You see, Doctor, the two were 
dying men; we were all dying men. Deshay 's 
investment was ultra-physical, and conse 
quently low; Claud's was psychical, and al 
though he might not last any longer, or as 
long, for that matter, he was all there as long 
as he did last; he was either alive or dead, 
not half-alive, like Deshay and as the 
springs of our lives ran low Deshay 's grew 
muddy, while Claud's was still clear and cold. 

"The following morning Dixie again dis 
covered a nest of eggs. I do not wish to tax 
your credulity, Doctor, and yet I will ask you 
to believe that so nearly approached the types 
of these two gentlemen that the sensibilities 
predominant in Claud obtained in Dixie to 
12361 



TWO GENTLEMEN 



an extent where he, too, felt the fall of De- 
shay, and when he had found the eggs and we 
starving wretches shambled up to the cache, 
Dixie, the fine, thoroughbred, peace-loving 
aristocrat, stood over his find with bared 
fangs and flashing eyes and allowed all to ap 
proach but Deshay. 

"Yet gentlemen do not press these things, 
these matters of authority, as do your ruf 
fians who have cut a high card in the shuffle 
of Fate they accept them as a matter of 
course and so neither Claud nor Dixie em 
phasized this occult change of balance, and as 
the days passed Deshay, crass fool that he 
was, lost sight of the fact that he had been 
relegated with any other dejecta. He would 
thrust in with surliness rather than ugliness, 
according to the nature of the low-grade, 
overthrown bully; but Claud and Dixie ig 
nored him, his two sailors grinned at him, old 
Lentz blinked at him, and I, the mean average 
of the lot, laughed at him and explained care 
fully to him in how very many different sorts 
[237] 



THE MOUNTAIN" OF FEARS 



of ways he was a fool, neglecting to help him 
out. This was quite safe, for, although my 
own mentality is of a fairly low grade, it was 
still in excess of Deshay 's, and this fact gave 
me the whip hand. I did not tell him too much, 
as I still cherished hopes of seeing him killed. 
" There came another season of starvation 
in this epoch of famine and none of us had 
anything to eat, and it was at this time that 
Deshay began a systematic stalking of Dixie, 
who was still a peace-lover and preferred, 
when nothing of greater value than his own 
life was at stake, to get out of the way. The 
dog slept always at his master's side, and, 
although the nights were cool to men starved 
and shelterless, Claud would never draw near 
the fire, because he wished to avoid the pro 
pinquity of Deshay. More than once I had 
awakened from my light, fitful, fever sleep to 
see this sneaking wretch creeping stealthily 
on hands and knees toward the sleeping ani 
mal, but with invariable result Dixie would 
slip silently away and Deshay would return 
I 238 ] 



TWO GENTLEMEN 



to the fire, cursing savagely. Often through 
the day one would see him slyly maneuvering 
to get witbin reach of his prey; and as our 
starvation proceeded, this desire fastened 
upon his famished brain with the force of an 
insistent idea, until I really believe that he 
was impelled less by his hunger than through 
a sort of dementia. At times he would awake 
with a sharp cry, spring to his feet and rush 
at Dixie, who would lope away before him, 
when Deshay would fall into a paroxysm of 
rage. At these times Claud would turn away 
with a shiver of disgust, Lentz would blink 
rapidly, the two sailors would lie upon their 
empty bellies and snigger, while I would 
laugh. 

"Yet all of this time Deshay had been en 
croaching little by little upon Claud's liberty, 
for^you see, Doctor, he was one of those un 
imaginative animals who require a clubbing 
at certain intervals as a sort of tonic treat 
ment. Claud had utterly ignored him ; he had 
rubbed against the rest of us in little ways 
I 239 ] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



and found himself of baser metal, but Claud, 
like Dixie, had only avoided him, and this 
avoidance he continued to misinterpret until 
his confidence returned. 

"It was after one of his frantic attempts 
to catch Dixie that he sought to force the 
issue. He turned suddenly and strode to 
where Claud was lying on the sand, and at 
the sight of his face the lad struggled to his 
feet while I sat and waited, for something 
seemed to tell me that the time had come, and 
I felt no fear of the result. 

' ' ' Call your dog, you putty-face ! ' snarled 
Deshay. 'Call your dog!' he thrust out his 
matted jaw; 'call him up where I can get my 
hands on him ! ' said he. He had put away his 
knife and gripped the stretcher. 'Call him 
up, d'ye hear, or I'll spatter your fool brains 
all over the shop!' 

"It was here that he struck the steel beneath 

the fresco. Claud looked him over, carefully, 

coolly, and, although their faces were almost 

in contact, from such an infinite distance 

[240] 



TWO GENTLEMEN 



and then he spoke, in a voice which matched 
his look, and at the chill of it Deshay drew 
back. 

* ' Claud half turned and pointed to the clus 
ter of palms. 'Go over there,' said he, very 
quietly, 'and see if you cannot die a little 
more decently than you have lived.' Words 
fail to express the icy dignity of his tone. 'It 
is the only thing left for you,' he continued, 
and leaned slightly toward Deshay, looking 
intently into his face, and at something in the 
look Deshay drew back with a shiver. ' There 
is death in your eyes,' said Claud; 'I think 
that you are going to die this very day' and 
then the bolt fell. 

"Deshay, terrified, panic-struck at some 
quality of the cold voice and the words and 
the chill light of the eyes, staggered and 
threw up one arm as if to ward a blow. There 
was no suspicion of a threat in the gesture 
no intent but Dixie, crouching at his mas 
ter's side, read it differently. Before De- 
shay's arm began to descend the hound had 
I 241 ] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



sprung. There was the shock of contact, gur 
gling noises, convulsive forms heaving upon 
the sand, the guttering sounds of of the 
abattoir! I saw the snout of the hound 
twisted sideways, the nose pushed comically 
upwards, the full mouth in a grotesque grin. 
Ah, what is more terrible, Doctor, than to see 
something in human guise worried and throt 
tled by something in the guise of a brute 
beast?" 

Leyden walked to the rail, drummed upon 
it with his fingers and spat several times into 
the sea. One guessed that he felt with the 
hound. 

11 Dixie sprang back," he continued, his 
face still from me ; ' 'he sprang back and stood 
panting, salivating as a dog does when for 
the first and only time in his life he commits 
the error of picking up a toad. Dixie was a 
starving animal you understand, Doctor 
and his mouth was full of blood, but he did 
not want that blood that human blood nor 
did he want a human life, to save Ms own. 
I 242 ] 



TWO GENTLEMEN 



He backed away, then leaned far forward 
as far as he could without stepping nearer, 
and his delicate nostrils twitched at his work 
where his hold had been. 

"Soon he turned and walked slowly down 
to the water, waded out and swam seaward, 
until all that I could see was the brown speck 
of his head just entering the outer line of 
surf; and then he disappeared, and it 
seemed to me that there were other specks 
about in the water ; but I did not see much of 
anything for a while. I heard Claud laughing 
as if to kill himself, and apparently he did, 
for the natives who found me said that he was 
dead and one of the sailors was dead. The 
other sailor, Lentz and myself hung on the 
sailor because he took advantage of what 
Dixie would not do; Lentz, because his pulse 
was slow, like a tortoise, and, like a camel, he 
was able to live for a while on his reserve adi 
pose ; and I, because the fever had banked my 
fires so low that no food was required. Be 
sides, I am tough, and will you please tell 
[243] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



me, Doctor, what in the devil ever possessed 
me to tell such a villainous story! That cat? 
Ach! yes p'st! scat, you beast!" 

I walked over and put a "sheep-shank" in 
the lanyard on the cage of the tulu-pial bird, 
and then the cat was unable to reach it. 



[244] 




THE BAMBOULA 

ROM the deck of the ship the night 
seemed split into three zones of 
darkness : the vague water, with 
its elusive surface sheen; the 
heavier murk of the land, which 
was not black, but a deep tone of color impal 
pable from lack of light ; then the sky, which 
was all that was left, and rested prone upon 
the other two, with no intermediary separa 
tion. 

I leaned on the rail and tried to pick out 
the features of the land ; a pale band of beach 
crept out of the opacity, and it seemed to me 
that I could see dark splotches where the 
compeche was piled. Now and then a light 
would spark out and disappear, in many cases 
its swinging motion proving it to be a torch 
carried in some black fist. A thin land breeze 
had sprung up, and it brought off the scent 
[245] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



of the damp earth, whifTs of wood smoke, and 
now and then the heavy fragrance of the 
stephanotis. Deeper in the gloom tossing 
hills threw their rough shoulders against the 
opaque sky. 

Suddenly, from a shadowy recess in the 
black land there arose the steady beat of a 
drum a pulsing, cavernous sound, measured 
in rhythmic time, neither loud nor fast ; a pa 
tient sound, yet a note impalpable in quality, 
insistent and seeming like the throbbing 
heart-beat of the savage island sleeping under 
the black mantle of the night. 

There came an alert step on the deck be 
hind me, and a throaty voice, with the hint of 
a German accent, remarked at my shoulder: 

"Thebamboula!" 

It was Dr. Leyden who spoke a shipmate 
whom I had met the day we both went aboard 
at Demerara. He had just come down the 
Essequibo, after three months' orchid-hunt 
ing in the bush ; an interesting man, who was 
by profession what one might call a "market- 
[246] 



THE BAMBOULA 



naturalist. ' ' By that I mean that he was one 
of these not ultra-scientific collectors who can 
tell a rare specimen when they see it and who 
do the outdoor work of the ''closet natural 
ist," in whose place they get the fever, and 
to whom they are ready to sell fame at so 
much per bone, or bug, or plant. He had been 
everywhere, barring the populous communi 
ties, and was at home with all primitive peo 
ples. "No, Doctor," he said to me one day, 
"I speak very few languages, no more than 
nine or ten, but I am acquainted with a great 
many dialects!" He could acquire an ordi 
nary savage dialect in about a month. 

"What is it?" said I, in answer to his re 
mark. "A dance?" 

* ' Perhaps it sounds like it. There are but 
few lights yonder in the village and there are 
torches moving on the mountain-side. Wait 
let us see." 

Just below us a shore-boat was hanging to 
the staging at the foot of the accommodation 
ladder, waiting, no doubt, to take some vis- 
[247] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



itors ashore. Leyden called down to them in 
Creole, asking if there was to be a dance that 
night. One of the men replied somewhat sulk 
ily that there was not. 

"A minute," said Leyden, turning to me. 
He slipped below, and directly I heard what 
appeared to be the voice of a Haytian steve 
dore coming from one of the freight-ports. 
A boatman in the bow replied guardedly, and 
for a few minutes there was a conversation in 
low tones. Soon it ceased, and Leyden re 
joined me. 

"There is to be a dance," said he, "but it 
is a small affair." 

"Was that you talking from below?" I 
asked. 

"Yes. I stood back in the shadow, and the 
fellow thought that he was speaking with one 
of the black gang. They do not like to discuss 
the bamboula with leblancs." 

"Your imitation was extraordinary. If I 
had not suspected what you were up to I could 
have sworn that it was one of the Haytian 
[ 248 ] 



THE BAMBOULA 



boatmen talking. You must have lived in this 
country. ' ' 

"It was but three months, and that several 
years ago. I came here to catch snails. There 
was an experience a thing odd and uneven. 
It is possible that you would be interested 
listen!" He held up one hand. 

From out of the illusive velvety depths that 
marked the contours of the tumbling hills 
came monotonously the "tom-tom-tom-tom- 
tom-tom-tom, " now rising with the puff of 
the land breeze, waning slightly, yet unvary 
ing as the swing of a pendulum. With it came 
the night smells of flowers drenched in dew 
and the mouldy reek of the tropic woods. 

' ' Smell it ! " said Leyden. He leaned both 
elbows on the rail and dropped the butt of his 
cigar into the black water, where it drowned 
with a spiteful little hiss. "The 'barnboula' 
the smell of the trees and the stephanotis 
ach, how it seems as if it were last night! 
That bamboula, with its torn-tom-tom ! First 
it is quaint, then it is a nuisance, then irritat- 
[ 249 ] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



ing, then fascinating, and last of all it mad 
dens. To think that such a people should have 
learned the secret of repeated concussions on 
a single group of brain-cells - " 

' * You have heard it before? ' ' I interrupted, 
for I knew all of this he was telling me and 
wanted his story. 

"Yes. It was when I was here five years 
ago looking for snails. I was crossing on 
a French boat, and the second day out I met 
the Doctor and Madame Fouchere. He was 
a Haytian, a marabout, an Adonis carved out 
of jet, for you know that breed are of a type 
magnificent and hold their fineness of skin 
and feature far into- advanced age. He was 
an intelligent man, highly educated and 
skilled in his profession. I learned after 
wards that he was the left-handed son of a 
former President by a marabout woman one 
of the usual cases of placage of those high in 
official circles. Fouchere had been educated 
in France, and after talking with him for a 
while one forgot that he was black ; yet I will 
[250] 



confess to a sense of shock when he presented 
me to Madame. 

"She might easily have passed for pure 
French. I fancy that I was the only person 
aboard who could see the outcrop of African 
or, to be polite, Haytian. She was charm 
ing in manner and appearance, inclined to be 
fair, with blue eyes and that dusky blonde 
hair which will defy any pedigree. Her face 
was pretty, rather piquant, and her figure 
svelte and full of grace. Altogether she was 
most attractive and not lacking in a certain 
cilic, but there was a furtive expression about 
her eyes like that which I have noticed in the 
eyes of a trained lioness. 

"I talked with the Foucheres many times 
during the voyage, and learned that since 
their marriage they had lived in Paris and 
were returning to Hayti for the first time. 
Madame, it appeared, although Haytian by 
birth, had been sent to a convent school in 
France when a mere child and had not visited 
her native country since then. 
[251] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



"The day after our arrival in New York 
we sailed for Hayti by the Dutch mail. By 
this time I had grown to know them quite 
well. A very decent fellow, Fouchere ; differ 
ent from the average educated Haytian but, 
then, he was of quite a higher type. On part 
ing at Port-au-Prince he made me promise to 
visit them before I left the island." 

Leyden paused and shifted his position, 
leaning back against an awning stanchion and 
hooking the fingers of one hand over the bolt- 
rope above his head. The night had dark 
ened, for a heavy cloud-bank had drifted 
across to shroud that part of the sky where 
the late moon would rise. It welded to itself 
the dim, broken outline of the mountain-tops 
and gave to the sable contour of the land the 
sinister aspect of looming almost to the zen 
ith and all the while from somewhere just 
beneath the surface came the hollow, rhyth 
mic beat of the bamboula. 

"Enough to drive one loi" muttered Ley- 
den. 

[252] 



THE BAMBOULA 



I heard a rustling from the shore-boat lying 
at the staging. The crew were softly pick 
ing up their oars. 

1 'They are getting restless, those fellows 
below. They cannot stand it long, this night 
and that noise. Ho! they are shoving off 
without their fares." He leaned over the 
rail and hailed the boatman in Creole. 

"Ou ga v' oiler?" he called, with a trace of 
irony. They paid no attention. 

" Attention, mon cher! Ou ga v'aller?" he 
called, peremptorily. 

"Ca ou dit!" growled one of the men, sulk- 

iiy. 

"Cote bamboula la?" called Leyden. They 
began to row again, without answering, but it 
seemed to me that I caught a mutter which 
sounded like "nere vous ecrasse!" 

Leyden chuckled. "Like master, like man 
in this savage country," he remarked, ab 
sently. "But I was telling you about Fou- 
chere. When I had got my snails and a beetle 
or two I remembered my promise to Fou- 
[253] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



cliere and looked him up. He had a nice 
place, for Hayti, up at La Coupe. I sent word 
that I was coming the day before, and one of 
his servants came down the mountain on 
horseback with a note from Madame express 
ing herself as charmed. I went up the fol 
lowing forenoon. You know what the journey 
is from Port-au-Prince to La Coupe : six miles 
of steady upward strain by two emaciated, 
dying ponies, along a road which the rains 
have made the dry bed of a torrential cataract ; 
a half -wrecked surrey fastened together with 
ropes, two of the wheels on the wrong side 
before, the bush turning in the hub of one of 
them and screaming like a soul in torment; 
bad sights and bad smells at every hand, and 
all about you scenery which seems almost as 
divine as the Garden of Paradise. 

"When finally I arrived, feeling like the 
pea in a tin whistle, the Foucheres were await 
ing me; and when Madame led me through 
the house to the verandah in the rear, whence 
one got the full magnificence of the view of 
[254] 



THE BAMBOULA 



the green valley stretching away to Port-au- 
Prince, the sparkling blue of the bay, the 
vivid green of the mountains rising behind 
Bisoton, and far in the distance the cloud- 
capped island of Gonave, I felt amply repaid 
for the sun and the dust and other trials of 
the trip up. 

' ' Our dejeuner was very good, though, like 
even the best in Hayti, falling just a little 
short of being clean, and later in the day Dr. 
Fouchere ordered his ponies saddled, and we 
rode higher up the mountain to a point 
whence we were able to enjoy a magnificent 
view of the bay on one side and the big lakes 
which form part of the geographical boun 
dary between Hayti and Santo Domingo on 
the other. 

"We dined at six, for the Haytians retire 
early when they retire at all. After dinner, 
as we sat upon the verandah with our cigars, 
I became conscious of a certain lack of repose 
on the part of both my host and hostess. 
Madame was obviously making an effort to 
[255] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



be at ease, yet all of the time it seemed to me 
that she was under a certain tension; alert, 
expectant and a little restive as one listens 
for a summons or fears that perhaps it may 
have passed unobserved. Dr. Fouchere was 
also distrait, and several times I noticed that 
he turned his head sharply to one side, as if 
striving to catch some hidden sound. 

"It was such a night as this dark, still, 
partly clouded, but with stars and a late moon. 
At times there would be a flare of lightning 
in the south, but the five o'clock shower had 
come and gone and there would be no more 
rain. I was narrating an experience in Java, 
and they appeared to be interested; then, as 
I talked on, there came pulsing up from the 
valley beneath the slow, measured beat of a 
bamboula. 

"I heard a rustle from the chaise-longue 
occupied by Madame ; the dull glow at the end 
of Dr. Fouchere 's cigar blazed suddenly 
bright, then died away again. 

"I went on with my story, but all of the 



THE BAMBOULA 



time that wretched drum was sounding its 
even, tireless beat, and, although a good way 
off, there was something insistent about the 
noise which refused to be ignored. As I talked 
on, it began to set a time for my speech, and 
I found myself unconsciously trying to ad 
just it to my words, or, more properly, to 
adjust my words to it. Some people have a 
more distinct perception of time and rhythm, 
just as some have a keener musical ear, and 
I have both. The result was that before long 
I began to get a bit confused, missed the point 
of my anecdote and finished lamely and with 
some anger. 

* ' ' Will that fellow never finish beating that 
drum?' I demanded impatiently of my host. 
Of course, I had heard such instruments be 
fore during my sojourn in the country, and 
had often noticed the children thumping them 
in the daytime, so that the sound had no espe 
cial significance for me. 

"The lighted end of Dr. Fouchere's cigar 
suddenly glowed again, then he remarked: 
[257] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



'I am afraid that noise will go on all night, 
Dr. Leyden. I understand that the peasants 
are having one of their dances to-night.' He 
slightly emphasized the word peasants. 

" 'The bamboulat' I asked, curiously, for, 
of course, I knew of the rites attendant upon 
voodoo worship, although I had never wit 
nessed them. 

" 'Yes,' he answered; 'one of my servants 
told me this evening that there was to be a 
dance to-night. This relic of paganism is one 
of the curses of our country, Dr. Leyden. Al 
though we whites have done our best to dis 
countenance it, it still persists.' 

"Unlike most Haytians of the better class, 
who pretend to a black aristocracy socially 
superior to the white, Dr. Fouchere always 
referred to himself as white, although a 
blacker man never walked in the full blaze 
of the equatorial sun. No doubt this was due 
to his prolonged residence among the white 
race. 

" 'Is the affair, then, as bad as it is 
[258] 



THE BAMBOULA 



painted?' I inquired, for I had heard some 
very somber stories of the bamboula. 

"He hesitated for an instant, and in the 
pause my ear caught the click of Madame 's 
little slipper tapping the floor to the time of 
the distant drum. 

" 'It is primitive,' replied my host. 'A 
virile people do not forget in a day the 
customs of centuries.' He paused again, 
and, as before, I heard the click-click of 
Madame 's slipper marking the beat of the 
drum. 

" 'Perhaps Dr. Leyden is fatigued and 
would wish to retire,' she suggested. 'One 
rises early - ' 

" 'Indeed,' I protested, 'I am accustomed 
to sleep but little, but pray do not let me keep 
you and Dr. Fouchere from your repose. ' To 
tell the truth, the thought of lying on a bed 
and counting the strokes of that infernal 
drum was terrifying to me. 

' ' There was another brief pause, but in the 
interval I heard Fouchere 's fingers softly tap- 
I 259 ] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



ping the rail in concert with the drum and 
the slipper of Madame." 

Leyden paused and stared into the viscid 
water beneath. The land breeze was fanning 
steadily now ; the regular pulses of sound had 
swelled in volume, but the interval was un 
changed. 

He continued, without looking up. " 'Der- 
riere mornes, gagner mornes,' as the Hay- 
tian proverb has it, "he sighed. ' * But I did not 
guess what was behind their solicitude for my 
comfort. Fouchere politely denied any wish 
to retire, and Madame said that she would 
wait a little longer before asking to be ex 
cused. 

" 'Come, we will smoke a fresh cigar,' said 
Fouchere, presently. He clapped his hands, 
but no servant appeared. 

" 'The rascals are all out,' he said, apolo 
getically. 'If you will pardon me, I will go 
myself. ' 

"I turned to Madame. 'Do you not find 
some of these customs rather terrifying?' I 
I 260 ] 



THE BAMBOULA 



asked ; ' and this country, with its glaring sun 
light and impenetrable shade, its rank, exu 
berant, primordial peoples ' I heard her 

give a short gasp in her throat; then she 
turned to me, bringing her white face, with 
its delicate features and great, luminous eyes, 
close to mine. 

" 'They live I f she answered, in a low, fierce 
voice. 'They live, and feel, and their blood 
runs ' 

"She sank back, and at this moment Dr. 
Fouchere returned and offered me a cigar, 
which I took thankfully, for I wanted to 
drown the sensual smell of plant and fern 
wafted from the woods beneath and the mad 
dening odor of the stephanotis growing in the 
garden at our feet. If he had offered me 
strong drink, cognac, absinthe, or even opium, 
I might have taken it, too, for there was some 
thing in the darkness of the night that blinded 
the reason and voices in the soft air and scent- 
laden breeze that called insidiously to the 
senses; and all the while droned on the am- 
1 261 1 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



phorous note of the drum, though now it 
seemed to come from the inside, impelling one 
to fervid action. 

" 'Those fools will dance and drink and 
revel to-night/ growled Fouchere, 'and to 
morrow there will not be one in the village fit 
to stand upon his feet.' 

" 'Then,' said I, with an attempt at jocu- 
arity, 'they may seek your professional ad 
vice.' 

" 'No,' he muttered, 'they will go to the 
papa-loi the priest the arch-devil ' 

"There was a swift rustle, and Madame 
had leapt to her feet and was pacing the 
verandah with clinging, cat-like steps. I arose. 

" 'I am fatigued from sitting still,' she 
explained, with a light but nervous laugh. 
' See, the moon is rising. ' 

"I glanced toward the east and saw a. dull 
yellow glow before which the low stars paled. 
Madame permitted herself another turn of 
the verandah, and as she passed the banded 
shaft of light which smote through the jal- 
[262] 



THE BAMBOULA 



ousies from the illuminated room I noticed 
that her slim fingers were closing and open 
ing as if- she were in pain. Her light foot 
steps fell in unison with the beat of the bam- 
boula. 

"My host and I talked on different things, 
and still Madame paced back and forth, and 
every time she passed the barred zone of light 
I saw the white fingers writhing in and out, 
and at times clutching the light fabric of her 
skirt in a grip that left it creased and seamed 
and still the drum beat on and on. Fou- 
chere's manner of speech had changed; his 
statements were short and arbitrary, as if 
challenging contradiction ; his chair had come 
down to all four legs, and he sat bolt upright, 
tense, together, as if prepared to spring up 
ward at a bound. As the light over the moun 
tain glowed brighter I could see the silhouette 
of his straight back against the sky, as 
straight and cleanly cut as one of the posts 
of the verandah. 

"Soon Madame paused in her promenade, 
[263] 



and, walking to the rail, gazed at the glowing 
light in the sky, .and as she stood, the drum, 
partially drowned before by her light step 
and the swish of her skirts, welled out reso 
nantly. I glanced at her curiously. It was 
still too dark to distinguish her features, but 
a naturalist, or, more properly, perhaps, a 
collector, can see things to which better eyes 
than his are blind, and it seemed to me that 
I caught a swift quiver as it flashed across 
her mobile face. Suddenly she turned. 

" *I think that I shall beg to be excused/ 
she said, in a low voice. ' The heat of the day 
has fatigued me, and the night air is cool and 
promises refreshing sleep. Would not Mon 
sieur wish also to retire?' 

"Dr. Fouchere arose as if to show me to 
my room. I had no desire to go to bed, for I 
did not think I could sleep ; but, following the 
line of least resistance, I went. 

"Lying on my bed, with that old and jaun 
diced moon peering through the window and 
the whole earth wrapped in the stillness of 
.[264] 



46*. ^^ 

THE BAMBOULA 



utter space, the bamboula, which had never 
ceased, seemed pounding at the portals of my 
brain. Have you ever, after a day of almost 
superhuman physical exertion say a long 
march through the jungle carrying a double 
pack lain too tired to sleep and listened to 
your overtaxed heart pounding its pulse 
against your ear-drums? No? Well, it is 
hard to say what else that drum was like. It 
appeared, too, to have grown louder, although 
the time continued to be exactly the same. 

1 ' Before long I dozed a little, but the drum 
beat on, weaving weird and distorted pictures. 
I saw the stark, whirling figures glistening 
ebony-red in the lurid firelight, the outer cir 
cle of fantastic shadows gyrating in a wider 
arc; the flash of flames between the circling 
shapes others partly hidden watching 
from the black hollows between the buttressed 
boles of the trees. The old, old rites burst 
ing out in this civilized era like embryonic 
cells in the adult cancer-cells you under 
stand, Doctor. Later on, the sickly yellow 
[265] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



moon, high in the zenith, its pale light quench 
ing that of the dying embers of the fire and 
waning itself before the dawn. The things it 
looked down upon the heaving figures of the 
devotees and all about the pure, sweet peace 
of the tropic night ! 

1 1 ' Tom - torn - torn - torn - torn - torn - torn - 
torn, ' went the drum, and then I awoke with a 
shiver and began to dress. I stepped to the 
window for added light, and other noises than 
those of the drum welled up from the valley 
beneath. Air was stirring, and it blew 
through my jalousies and filled the room with 
the smell of the stephanotis. 

* ' Quietly as a cat I slipped down the stairs 
and out into the night. Not a sound, not a 
flicker of light came from any of the little 
houses in the village. I followed the road 
down the mountain for a way, and then, as I 
am a tracker and the moon was well up, I 
found a path which others had taken since the 
dew. It skirted the hill, then dipped abruptly 
into the jungle. 

[266] 



THE BAMBOULA 



"It was easy to guess its course, for with 
my bushman's education I saw that many per 
sons had traveled that trail since sunset. 
Down it went, twisting and turning, this way 
and that: but all the time the beat of the 
drum, though muffled by the heavy foliage, 
was growing nearer and nearer. 

"It was dark in the jungle, but the moon 
was up, and there were open spaces here and 
there. The smell of the smoke and another 
smell were in the air, and I was growing 
wary and looking for sentries, when my eye 
was caught by something white hanging to 
a thorn. I loosed it and held it in a moon-ray 
and recognized a fragment of the gown 
worn that night by Madame Fouchere." 

Leyden stopped speaking, then began to 
hum a little German doggerel. Down below 
the visitors were saying good-night, and I 
could hear the men kissing each other on their 
thick lips. "Ah, mon cher!" they kept say 
ing. "Oh oh, mon cher! Oh, m'cherl" 
Then there would be a rattle of very good 
[ 267 ] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



Parisian French, because the better classes 
pride themselves upon their elegance of 
speech. 

"And then?" said I, presently, to Dr. Ley- 
den. He threw out his hands with a Teutonic 
gesture of disgust. 

"Ach! then I went back, of course. I 
found a muddy spot in the open, just to make 
sure, and I saw that Fouchere had passed 
also. He wore the latest French boots 
Madame was still in her high-heeled French 
slippers at twenty francs the pair. ' ' 

He turned to me with a languid air. ' ' One 
does not spy upon one's host and hostess dur 
ing their religious devotions, you know. You 
understand, Doctor. Those things are not 
quite shall we say dignified? Besides by 
the way, have you a cigar, or shall I ring? 
Ah, thanks ! As I was about to say, the thing 
had lost its its glamour. Madame was too 
nearly white. It was the primitive element 
that had so strongly appealed to me not the 
hyper-aesthetic. One need not go to Hayti 
[268] 



THE BAMBOULA 



for that. Fouchere belonged at the party, 
perhaps but Madame . . . 

1 ' No, I went back, and the sound of a bam- 
boula has never since been able to strike a 
sympathetic chord in me but I detest the 
odor of the stephanotis." 



I 269 ] 




INTO THE DARK 

0-NIGHT, Doctor," said Leyden 
one evening as we went on deck, 
"let us forswear the exchange 
of blood-curdling yarns. Let us 
be sociable and play poker with 
my Czechian friend, Rosenthal, and Mr. Mai- 
lock." 

I agreed and we went into the rook kamer, 
where the others presently joined us. We 
played for perhaps an hour ; I do not remem 
ber just how the game stood when we were in 
terrupted by a tragic incident. 

From somewhere beneath us there came a 
sudden muffled roar ; the little vessel quivered 
as though struck by a shell; an instant of 
silence, then up from below there came a 
scream so wild and hoarse and laden with 
fearful human anguish that we all leaped to 
our feet. Shouts, yells, orders in half a dozen 
[ 270 ] 



INTO THE DARK 



tongues rose in a clamorous medley; but 
through them all as a bugle rings out on the 
firing-line there rose again that wild, wide- 
throated scream of intolerable physical pain. 
I knew the sound. I had heard it several 
times. The latest was in San Francisco on 
one of the big United States transports when 
a stevedore had up-ended a crate of primers 
which had exploded and filled the man's body 
with splinters so that he looked like a porcu 
pine. Leyden had heard it also, as the first 
glance at his face told me, and from his ex 
pression I saw that he had guessed the pres 
ent cause; but there was no time to inquire, 
for the screams now followed each other in 
quick succession and were approaching, and 
such screams! Opposite me Eosenthal, who 
had thrown down his hand at the beginning of 
the play and was about to take a swallow of 
his Ehine wine, paused, the glass half way to 
his lips, and hardened, world-worn adven 
turer that the Jew was, he positively looked 
sickened at the sound. 

[271] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



And then the clamor reached our deck, but 
forward, and we turned as one man and 
stepped out of the rook kamer. Abreast of 
the steam steering-gear there was a confused 
mass of yelling, gyrating figures, and from 
these we saw emerge a single one who with 
outspread arms and wide fingers came lurch 
ing toward us, and as he ran he screamed. 

The bulk of my professional work has been 
of an emergency character, so that even as 
the man approached I was framing a diagno 
sis, and before he had reached the part of the 
deck where we stood, it was made. The jar of 
the explosion, the screams of appalling pain, 
and now, swiftly as he approached, the suffo 
cating fumes of ammonia had preceded him, 
and I knew on the instant that there had been 
an explosion of the ice-making machine and 
that the victim was one who had bathed in the 
liquid fire set loose. Then as he bore down 
upon us, followed by the clamoring crowd 
who sought to restrain him for his good, 
something of the spirit of the hunted animal 
[ 272 ] 



INTO THE DARK 



fastened on the poor frenzied intellect and he 
sprang for the rail. 

"Ach, no!" muttered Leyden in my ear, 
and at the same instant leaped like a cat ; one 
of his powerful, nervous hands closed on the 
man's naked shoulder and the next moment 
the poor wretch was on his back, pawing 
the air, groping at his livid face, while 
his screams smote back the crowd of the 
curious. 

"Quick, Doctor!" said Leyden, and the 
words wedged in his throat as the pungent 
fumes gripped his trachea. He tried again to 
speak, but by that time I had seized Rosen- 
thai 's bottle of Rhine wine from the table and 
had begun to pour it over the man's face. Of 
course, there are better things than Rhine 
wine with which to neutralize stronger am 
monia, but that was the nearest at hand and 
haste was requisite. 

Presently the ship's doctor arrived with 
dilute acetic acid ; by that time Leyden and I 
were both nearly asphyxiated and the man 
[273] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



was in a syncope, poor fellow ! He saw light 
again, but never outline. 

Our game was abandoned. Leyden and I 
strolled aft to our favorite place by the hand 
steering-gear, where Leyden puffed at his 
porcelain pipe in silence for so long a time 
that I began to think that he would hold to the 
resolution made early in the evening and not 
tell the story which hung on the edge of his 
mind. 

"Ach!" he exclaimed suddenly, and tak 
ing the pipe from his mouth, tapped the horn 
mouth-piece against the awning stanchion. 
"Ach! One would almost think that God 
might spare a man two such spectacles as that 
which we have just witnessed. I am accus 
tomed to seeing men killed, Doctor; also to 
seeing -men suffer within reasonable limits, 
but I protest against casually witnessing tor 
ture. . . . 

"It was not so long ago, Doctor," he re 
sumed presently, "I was going out to Java 
via Singapore, and the first night out, while 
[ 274 ] 



INTO THE DARK 



chatting with the chief engineer, who was an 
old friend of mine, his second came to the 
door to report on something concerning the 
engines. I did not notice what he said, for 
the moment he stepped into the blaze of the 
incandescent lights I set my memory at work 
to place him. 

* ' This second engineer was, I think, Doctor, 
the most strikingly beautiful man I have ever 
seen. Eeally, the poor fellow was so hand 
some that he was almost disagreeably con 
spicuous, because one felt that no matter how 
great the effort, his deeper personality would 
never be able to hold the pace set by his physi 
cal appearance. I will not try to describe him ; 
figure to yourself a powerful frame of athletic 
perfection, the face of a very masculine arch 
angel, broad forehead, blazing sapphire eyes, 
with rather dark lashes, although his hair was 
yellow, a wide mouth of singularly winning 
expression and a jaw which was aristocrati 
cally masterful. He said but half a dozen 
words, and then at a nod from the chief, went 
[275] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



out, but brief as was my glimpse of him I was 
no less impressed by his striking beauty than 
by the fact that I had known some of his 
breed. 

" 'Who is that fellow? ' I asked of old Bur 
ton, the chief. 

" 'Dalton, my second/ said he; 'a good 
looking lad, is he not I ' 

" 'Extremely,' I answered; 'is he as good 
as he looks?' 

" 'Aye, and the more credit to him for 
that, to my mind, ' said Burton, and went on, 
'D'ye know, Doctor Ley den, the Almighty 
puts an awful strain on the moral construc 
tion of a man when he models him on the lines 
of yon lad ! And the boy knows it and is not 
too proud to shun the danger. You'll scarce 
lay eyes on him between here and Singa 
pore. ' 

" 'Is he shy of his good looks?' I asked. 

" 'Less that than proper-minded. If ever 
a man was built to carry an overload of wom 
en's fancies, 'tis this same Dalton. They can 
[276] 



INTO THE DARK 



see nothing else when the poor lad's about, 
not that he seems to notice it. ' 

11 'Is he a good man professionally?' I in 
quired. 

" 'He is all of that and more,' answered 
Burton, and was going on to tell me that, al 
though off duty at that moment, Dalton was 
hard at work superintending some repairs on 
the ice-machine when he was interrupted 
.... just as we were a few moments ago." 

' ' No ! " I cried involuntarily, as Leyden 
paused ; ' ' not that I ' ' 

"Yes, Doctor . . . the sequence of events 
was almost identical : the same explosion . . . 
the same sensation as of being hit by a shell 
. . . the same instant's pause followed 
by cries, one louder than the others, and the 
same stampede for the deck, the air, freedom 
from torture and suffocation; but in Dalton 's 
case no one was quick-witted enough to think 
of Ehine wine or vinegar, and we had to hold 
him until the doctor came . . . Ach! . . . 

"It seemed a long time, Doctor, especially 
[277] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



as the man's strength was so great that after 
his first mad rush his mind grappled with the 
situation and he lay without a moan, without 
a struggle. I assisted the surgeon in the little 
that it was possible to do for the poor fellow, 
and it was while we were bathing his face that 
I solved the problem of his identity. For 
many years, Doctor, I have, whenever in Eng 
land, made a tour of inspection of several 
large estates where I occupy a rather unique 
position of consulting horticulturist. To these 
patrons I sometimes ship from different parts 
of the world bulbs or plants or seeds or speci 
mens in which I judge they will be interested. 
It was while on one of these visits, some of 
which have become more of a social than pro 
fessional character, that I met Dalton, which, 
of course, was not his name. He was then at 
school, a charming boy, an only son and the 
heir to one of the oldest titles and most mag 
nificent estates in England. 

"This discovery did not come to me with 
any shock of surprise, for England is unlike 
[278] 



INTO THE DARK 



America, where one often sees the thorough 
bred working with his hands, and I had sus 
pected that his was either some youthful 
tragedy or the baton sinister. 

"Dalton lay quite still while the surgeon 
dressed and bandaged his face; then, as the 
last pin was being inserted, he said in a steady 
voice : 

11 'How about my eyes, Doctor?' 

"We'll hope for the best, old chap,' said 
this doctor, and I saw Dalton 's mouth, the 
only feature in sight, set with the rigidity of a 
death-mask. His chest filled deeply and he 
swallowed once or twice, and when he spoke 
again his voice was dry but quite firm. 

11 'You think the chances are against me, 
don't you, Doctor 1 ?' he said quietly. The sur 
geon looked doubtfully at me and I nodded. 

" 'Your case is like this, Dalton,' said he, 
'if the caustic action of the ammonia has not 
burned through the conjunctiva and into Ihe 
cornea the prognosis is good; otherwise it is 

bad but I don't anticipate total blindness.' 
[279] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



" 'How soon will you be able to tell with 
certainty ? ' asked Dalton, calmly. 

" 'Probably when I dress your eyes to 
morrow,' said the Doctor, adding, 'at the 
worst, you will never be in the dark. . . .' 

"'I know. . . .' Dalton 's voice was very 
low, very quiet; . . . 'you mean that I will 
live behind ground glass. . . .' 

' ' The firm mouth stiffened and the triangu- 
lar space which it occupied beneath the band 
ages grew suddenly white. At a sign from 
the doctor we picked him up and carried him 
to his berth and left him there to fight his 
fight alone. 

' ' That night I sat late with Burton and the 
pious old chief had a sharp tussle to remain 
within the bounds of Christian srbmission as 
we discussed the accident. I soon discovered 
that he knew more of Dalton than he cared to 
tell, but I asked no questions. When I left him 
at eleven o'clock I passed the open door of 
Dalton 's room, and as I did so I was conscious 
of one of those long, deep, shuddering inspi- 
[280] 



%* 

INTO THE DAEK 



rations which scarcely carry sound and seem 
wrung less from the body than the tortured 
soul. 

11 'Are you in pain!' I whispered, for I did 
not wish to wake him if he should be asleep. 

" 'In torture, Doctor Ley den/ came the 
low answer; 'but it is not of the flesh.' 

"This was the first indication that I was 
known to him. I slipped into the room and 
went to the head of his bunk. 

" 'May I sit with you?' I asked. 

' ' ' Thanks . . . you know me, of course ! ' 

" 'Yes,' said I. I dropped on the locker 
beside him, and for several moments neither 
of us spoke. 

" 'What do you think of my chances of los 
ing my sight, Doctor!' he asked presently. 

" 'I think,' said I, 'that your sight will be 
impaired, but not entirely destroyed. One 
eye appears to have been less injured than 
the other.' 

" 'Do you think that I will be able to do my 
work!' he asked quickly. 
[281] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



11 'Perhaps ... it is impossible to tell, 
my dear boy, until to-morrow very likely 
not for several days.' 

1 ' Again I felt that shuddering sigh which 
was less a sound than an impression. 

" 'It is not for myself that I am afraid, 
Doctor Leyden,' he said in a few moments. 
'There is some one else . . . other people 
. . . ." My word! One could see his very 
heart squirming in the grip of his feudal 
pride. 

" 'Tell me all about it, my boy,' said I. 
' Life has shown me many of her poisons . . . 
and their antidotes; perhaps I can help you.' 

' ' ' Thank you, Doctor, ' said he, and went on 
to tell me his story. Briefly, he had several 
years before committed the indiscretion of 
running off with another man 's wife ; not long 
afterward the husband had died and Dalton 
had married the woman. His father had cut 
him off without a penny, but through a friend 
he had got a billet as engineer, for which his 
technical education had fitted him, and had in 
[282] 



INTO THE DARK 



time risen solely through his merits. The 
wife and their two children were living in 
Singapore. 

' ' There were qualities in the romance, Doc 
tor, which raised it to a plane higher than 
most similar affairs. Ten years of poverty 
had brought them no regrets, and this alone 
seemed to me sufficient to warrant the breach 
of etiquette ; then, the former husband was a 
rake, or, what is far worse, an ex-rake. Also, 
the love of this man and woman had grown 
and deepened and gathered volume until, and 
this I gathered from what Dalton did not tell 
me,, the love itself contained in him had raised 
the nature of this man to a sublime height, 
where it would almost seem that he had un 
dergone an apotheosis ; this perfect love which 
had begun so imperfectly had matured this 
creature, who was the result of generations of 
highly bred and highly cultured ancestors, 
until the man was an Olympian, Doctor, a 
demi-god, or I am no judge of men. 

" Before long I left him, soothed as much' 
[283] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



as might be, and promising to sleep. When I 
visited him the following day he was calm, 
and one read only in the lines of the firm and 
beautiful mouth which cut the triangular 
space between the bandages, '/ wait.' " 

Leyden's voice grew muffled. 

' ' My word ! I couldn 't stand it, Doctor, for 
very long; it was worse than the accident it 
self. I sneaked off into Burton's room, and 
there the surgeon found me an hour later 
lying on the old man's bunk, for he was below 
at the time, and holding a capsized book in 
front of my face. There was a simplicity 
about this doctor which appealed to me. 

" 'Oh, hell !' said he, and dropped into Bur 
ton's desk chair and buried his face in his 
hands, and there he sat until presently the 
chief came in. From behind my book I could 
feel the grizzled old fellow looking from one 
to the other of us, and presently he gave a 
husky and inquiring grunt. 

" 'Blind,' said the doctor, .... stone 

blind,' and with that old Burton kicked shut 
[284] 



46* 

INTO THE DARK 



the door which opened on the boiler-room, and 
the three of us began to snivel in the shame 
faced way characteristic of certain emotional 
members of the Anglo-Saxon race. I think 
Burton prayed a little, for he was inclined to 
be theosophical. 

" 'Does he know?' asked Burton, pres 
ently. 

11 'No,' muttered the doctor, . . . I . . . 
I put him off. . . .' 

11 'You put him off!' I snapped. 'Do you 
mean to say that you have any hope?' 

" 'There's none to have,' he answered a bit 
sulkily; 'the cornea might just as well have 
been seared with a Paquelin. . . . ' 

' ' ' And yet you put him off ! ' I snarled, ' and 
add the hell of uncertainty to the agony he 's 
got to suffer anyway when he hears the 
truth!' 

" ' Go in and tell him yourself then, ' grum 
bled this doctor. 

" 'I will,' said I, and flung open the door 
and went out. I found Dalton lying on his 
[285] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



bunk, his face swathed in fresh bandages, his 
straight mouth sphinx-like. 

" 'Dalton,' said I, roughly, 'the doctor has 
just told me that you are blind.' 

" 'Has he?' said Dalton, calmly. 'The poor 
chap lacked the nerve to tell me, and I don't 
know that I blame him much. Beastly thing, 
that, to have to tell a chap that he 's blind. ' 

"I began to choke up again, Doctor. I had 
been purposely rough, commonplace, and I 
had expected and in fact half wished an hys 
terical outburst. As it was, the situation was 
infinitely more difficult. For several minutes 
Dalton did not speak. 

" 'Would you like me to stay with you?' I 
asked, 'or shall I get out?' 

' ' The bandaged head rolled toward me and 
the fine mouth curved in a smile which showed 
the white, even teeth. 

" 'Don't stay, Doctor; it is horribly de 
pressing for you and I am so busy thinking 
that I don't notice being alone. Come in and 

see me to-night, if you like. ' 
[286] 



INTO THE DARK 



* ' I left him then and went aft on the other 
side of the ship from Burton's room, and as I 
went I looked my hardest at the blue water 
and the blue sky and the bright-work and the 
bright faces of the children scampering up 
and down the deck . . . and then a 
mist came before my eyes and my vision 
was as Dalton's would be, 'behind ground 
glass.' 

"That night I went to him again. He 
greeted me quietly as I came in. 

' ' ' Doctor Leyden, ' said he, ' it is a terrible 
thing to be blind, is it not?' 

"I did not answer. 

' ' ' But it is not a terrible thing to die. We 
none of us fear to face death; most of us 
enjoy a bit of a tussle with the grim "old 
man.' 

' ' I had expected this and waited for him to 
go on. 

" 'To myself,' said Dalton, 'I consider that 
I am dead, practically dead.' He was silent 
for a few minutes and then said, ' Do you not 
[287] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



consider, Doctor Leyden, that we have all of 
us a certain claim upon each other as fellow- 
men !' 

" 'Undoubtedly,' I answered. 

" 'I am glad that you feel as I do,' said he 
composedly, ' because my claim upon you, 
Doctor Leyden, is that you go to my father 
and tell him of my death and its cause and 
make him support my family as they should 
be supported. He must make my oldest boy 
his heir. Will you do this for me? There is 
no desperate hurry ; within a year will be time 
enough.' 

"' Yes,' said I, 'I will do it.' 

"He was silent for many minutes and then 
he turned to me, and again his flashing smile 
illumined the triangular open space. 

" 'And now as to details,' said he. 'You 
would not try to prevent me if I were to get 
out of my bunk and get over the rail, would 
you, Doctor Leyden?' 

" 'No,' I answered. 'I would not try to 
prevent you.' 

[288] 



INTO THE DARK 



" There was another silence, and then he 
said in a low voice : 

" 'Don't you think that it would be easier 
. . . . for her?' 

" 'No,' I said, 'I don't.' 

" 'But living I can only be a weight a 
drag. ' 

' * ' Her little children are that, ' said I. 

" 'But don't you see,' he cried, 'how differ 
ent it is ? They will grow up. . . ' His voice 
rose in key. 

" 'They will grow up and need her less/ 
said I; 'it is while they are drags, weights, 
that they give her the greatest joy.' 

" 'Don't,' he groaned, '. . . . don't you 
see, man, that my mind was at rest about it ; 
that I was cheerful, happy, when it was only a 
matter of dying, . . . and now that you are 
taking that away, think of the horror of 
what's left. . . .' His mouth writhed. 

" 'You are the chief sufferer,' said I. 'My 
sympathy is for you. I did not mean to de 
stroy your faith in the ethics of this thing. 
[289] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



Personally, for your own good, I would ad 
vise you to get overboard, and if you wish I 
will lead you to the rail. I have been truth 
fully answering the questions which you 
asked me concerning your wife. . . .' 
"We were both silent for many minutes. " 
" 'I begin to see it now, I begin to see it 
. . . you are right. . . .' And then, Doc 
tor, as he looked down the long, dark, narrow 
corridor stretching away into the years of 
obscurity before him the shadow fell across 
his soul and I left him writhing beneath the 
weight of his doom." 

Leyden paused and turned his pale, classic 
face toward the liquid darkness of the star- 
flecked sky. " . . . See all of those plan 
ets, Doctor," he mused, "and think of what 
the sight of just one of them would mean to a 
blind man ... a single break in the utter 
obliteration of a sense ... a pin-prick in 
the curtain. ... I once witnessed an opera 
tion which restored to a blind man the percep 
tion of light alone ... no vision, only light 
[290] 



INTO THE DARK 



.... and he would place his hands over 
his eyes and then take them away and laugh 
with the joy of a heart too full for utterance. 
Think of the myriad things we see which go 
to waste! My word, it makes one wish to 
treasure the image of each passing ob 
ject. . . ." 

''And now, Doctor, I will tell you the rest, 
and then you shall tell me if I was a fool to 
answer him so truthfully ; in my own mind I 
have never been quite sure. 

" Three days saw the end of his period of 
frantic and agonized depression, for his stoi 
cism and self-control abandoned him as soon 
as I removed the balm of a voluntary death. 
In this time he would see none of us ; would 
eat because he had determined to live ; but one 
could see that a word of comfort, of sympathy, 
would be infuriating. Next came a week of 
apathy while the wound was granulating . . . 
inside and out. What is it, Doctor, which reg 
ulates the duration of violent pain when its 

cause still persists f In the case of this newly 
[291] 



THE MOUNTAIN' OF FEARS 



blinded man, with his high vitality and potent 
perceptions, one could not conceive of such a 
thing as reconciliation, nor did it arrive as 
such. . . ." 

' ' The first inkling I had of the change was 
while we were going down the Red Sea. I 
had gone to pay my usual afternoon visit ; one 
of the mess boys was coming from Dalton's 
room, and as he stepped into the corridor I 
heard Dalton's voice say peevishly: 

" 'Be sure to get it well done and plenty of 
gravy ... do you hear, plenty of gravy/ 

"Ach! For no reason the words shocked 
me more than when he had told me of his wish 
to die ! Plenty of gravy . . . ! What could 
it matter to a man newly blind if his gravy 
were of gall and wormwood? What could it 
matter?" 

"Dalton had before this time recovered 
from the physical effects of the shock; the 
epidermis of his face had not been deeply 
burned ; the danger to his eyes was due to the 
fact that the irritation of the caustic had in- 
[292] 



INTO THE DARK 



voluntarily forced him to hold the lids shut, 
thus causing the stuff to burn the more deep 
ly. His face had been blistered as it might 
from any burn and the new skin had formed 
beneath, and at this time the bandages were 
off and the only evidence of the accident was 
in the pellucid film drawn across his pupils. 
He wore dark glasses to prevent the irritant 
action of the light. 

* ' It was a few days later that I received an 
other shock. The chief and I were standing 
by the railing talking when, glancing forward, 
I saw the doctor come around the corner of 
the deck-house leading Dalton by the hand. 
Burton caught sight of them as soon as I, and 
happening to glance at him, I saw an odd ex 
pression cross his face; it was not alone the 
shadow of pain and compassion, which would 
have been natural there was something puz 
zled in the look, something studious, contem 
plative. The doctor led Dalton to a wicker 
chaise-longue and left him there. The face of 
the blind man was turned in our direction, 
I 293 ] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



but our voices failed to reach him above the 
swash alongside. 

" 'Poor lad!' said Burton, in a low 
voice. 'He were better dead, Doctor. I ... 
I ... I did not think to see him abide 
by it. ... There was a vague disappoint 
ment in the old man's voice which irri 
tated me. 

" ' I agree with you that he would be better 
off himself if he were dead, ' I answered curt 
ly, 'but there are others than himself to con 
sider. ' 

"Burton shook his head. 

" ' 'Twould be better for him if he were 
dead,' he answered; 'he can no longer con 
tribute to their support; and as far as senti 
ment is concerned, why, do you not see, Doc 
tor ' 

" 'Do I not see what?' I asked testily, the 
more so because I saw very well, and I felt 
that it was my work. 

' ' ' That he is no longer the same man, ' said 
Burton. 'Look at the face of him as he turns 
[294] 



46* 

INTO THE DARK 



it this way. Do you think that dark glasses 
could ever make that change ? ' 

' l Once again, Doctor, there ran through me 
the little chill which I had felt on hearing Dai- 
ton emphasize the detail of his dinner. Bur 
ton was right ; he no longer was the same man, 
and as I realized this and was able to look 
with clear sight far into his future I felt for 
the moment as if I had tampered with the 
man's soul. We are what we are by virtue of 
our senses, Doctor, for it is through them that 
we give and receive and translate and modify 
and perform the various functions and evolve 
the phenomena, the sum of which is known as 
life. Of these senses sight is perhaps the one 
through which we receive the most and must 
keep on receiving, to fulfil the constant de 
mand of the dependencies of this sense, and 
just as the nature of a man is rounded and 
made fuller and finer and greater by that 
which he sees, so must it shrivel and wane 
when this tributary of the soul is cut off. 

"It is, of course, unnecessary to state that 
[295] 



THE MOUNTAIN' OF FEARS 



Dalton was an object of the most supreme 
compassion to the passengers, and where he 
had at first shunned their expressions of sym 
pathy I noticed that as the days wore on he 
first endured, then courted them. His face, 
too, had changed; the fine, sensitive lines 
about the mouth and eyes were gradually 
erased ; he began to put on flesh ; his appetite 
was better than before the accident; his de 
meanor grew to be gentle and passive. I have 
seen women read to him by the hour and final 
ly close the book and steal away in tears, but 
do you know, Doctor, that while my compas 
sion was as great as ever, the change in the 
man had cooled my sympathy. I grew to be 
sorry for him only with my head." 

"Burton understood. He said to me one 
day, * ? Tis a rongh thing, Doctor Leyden, that 
I cannot take yon poor lad's hurt more to 
heart, but 'tis not as if 'twas Dalton himself 
in such trouble. Honestly, Doctor, I believe 
that part of the man I loved was killed in him 
with the loss of his sight. . . .' He glanced 
[296] 



INTO THE DARK 



narrowly down the deck to where Dalton was 
talking earnestly with one of the women pas 
sengers. 'Look now . . . one cannot im 
agine Dalton so pouring out his soul to a 
stranger, for the lad was always shut within 
himself with a double water-tight bulkhead!* 

" 'He told me this morning,' said I, 'that 
the passengers were taking up a collection for 
him.' 

" 'Did he, now? . . . but there! . . . 
why not for a poor fellow with a wife and chil 
dren, struck blind in the performance of his 
duty? Only . . . only . . .' 

" 'Only it is not like Dalton,' said I, 
harshly. 

" 'No, Doctor. Belike it is the humbleness 
of soul which comes to those whom the Lord 
deeply chastens, . . . and it is a balm, Doc 
tor, ... a balm. . . .' 

"When the ship reached Singapore I offer 

ed to conduct Dalton to his home. It was a 

sweet spot on one of the charming little isl 

ands a short row from the mainland; a bun- 

[297] 



THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 



galow half hidden in the foliage, a diminutive 
jetty with a dozen steps leading into the dark 
green shadows. As our sampan drew 
near I saw a woman with a toddling 
child on either side step from this plushy 
background and descend the steps. See 
ing me, a white man and a stranger, 
she paused at the head of the toy jetty, but 
as Dalton, wearing his dark glasses, be 
gan to fumble at the ladder with no hail, 
no word of greeting, she slipped her hands 
from those of the children and ran forward 
swiftly. 

"'Hugh! . . .'she cried. '. . . Hugh!' 
" 'One minute, girlie,' answered .Dalton. 
His voice was full, cheerful, a fat voice, Doc 
tor, and a trifle flat in timbre, and as it reach 
ed the ears of the woman I saw her stop as 
one might stop who runs to meet a bullet full 
in the chest. 

" 'Hugh!' she cried again, and as she was 
by this time close at hand, I spoke. 

' 'He has met with an accident to his eyes 
[298] 



INTO THE DABK 



. . . ,' I began .... and then looked, 
away, but not in time to miss the expression 
of her face as she cast her eyes first at her 
husband, then at me, . . . and I knew that I 
had fetched home a stranger to fill a hus 
band's place." 

Leyden paused and stared moodily at the 
bowl of his china pipe. ' ' There is a good deal 
in sacred literature, as well as in the laws of 
each land, Doctor, concerning the impropriety 
of interfering with the duration of a man's 
life; is there anything regarding the sin of 
interfering with his death . . . 1 because 
there ought to be ! It cannot be pleasing to 
God to prolong an existence which He has 
culled in part. . . . " 

"Six months later I returned that way on 
my journey home from Java. I took a sampan 
and was sculled across to the little island, and 
there in front of the bungalow I found Dalton 
sitting beneath the high shade of the royal 
palms. He had grown heavy; the last lines 
had left his face, which was now smooth as 
[ 299 ] 



46* 3 

THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS 

that of a child. I noticed as his hands rested 
on the arms of the chair that the thumbs had 
thickened, yet his other senses had begun to 
do the mechanical work of his lacking sight." 

" 'Is that you, Leyden?' he asked, in a full, 
flat, heavy voice, the voice which suggested a 
fat throat. His two children were playing 
about his chair; all three were munching a 
confection of sugar and chopped cocoanut. 

" 'Yes,' he said, in answer to my question. 
' We are doing nicely. An, Ley den, each cloud 
has its silver lining. . . .' His wife joined 
us at this point and a glance at her face 
showed me the change. I had never known it 
otherwise, yet the change was evident. '. . . 
I wrote to the earl . . . . ' continued Dalton 
his voice grew slightly peevish * . . . . and 
while he was not above hurting the feelings 
of a poor blind man . . . .' the fat voice 
grew querulous '. ... he was generous 
.... very generous . . . .' a compla 
cent note crept in. 

"I glanced at the woman and a shiver ran 
[300J 



INTO THE DARK 



down my back. 'I am glad . . . .' I man 
aged to mutter, '. . . . very glad . . . .' 
She glanced at me warningly and laid her fin 
ger on her lips, then nodded toward the land 
ing. I shook his hand, which was sticky from 
the sweet-meats. 

" l Good-bye .... I have barely time 
. . . .'I mumbled and followed the woman 
toward my boat. ' ' 



THE END 



I 301 ] 



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him among writers. He paints with a pen, and does so beau 
tifully and distinctly." St. Louis Republic. 

A. S. BARNES & COMPANY, NEW YORK 



NOVELS WORTH READING 

MINERVA'S MANOEUVRES. The Cheerful Tale of a "Return 
to Nature." By Charles Battell Loomis. Illustrated by F. R. 
Gruger. I2mo. Cloth. $1.50. 

Mr. Loomis' s name has become a synonym for good cheer. 
In the prevailing fashion of " nature study " and a " return to 
nature," Mr. Loomis's quaint and gentle humor has found a 
delightfully fitting theme. The adventures at the summer home 
to which Minerva is led from the city to dwell with nature, and 
the series of unexpected and mirthful incidents form a story which 
readers have described as the legitimate successor to " Rudder 
Grange." It is a story free from stress or strain. There are 
no problems except the problem of Minerva and the simple life, 
and these are solved with unexpected turns and a richness of 
humorous situations. 

ON TTBEE KNOLL. A Story of the Georgia Coast. By 
James B. Connolly. Illustrated in colors by Ch. Weber- Ditzler. 
I2mo. Cloth. 1 1. 25. Second edition. 

*' There is adventure aplenty, and much frustrating of the 
schemes of revengeful men." N. T. Tribune. 

*' Clean and natural. Leaves a good taste in the mouth," 

Chicago Evening Post. 

"A breezy story told with engaging frankness." 

New*rk Advertiser. 

SERENA. A Novel. By Virginia Frazer Boyle. Frontispiece in 
colors by Elizabeth Gowdy Baker. I2mo. Cloth. $1.50. 
Second edition. 

"The high standard of her short stories is well maintained. 
Strong and unusual." N. T. Globe. 

"This romance runs the entire gamut of the human emotions." 

N. T. American. 

"Easily one of the very best among the good stories of the 
Old South." N. T. World. 

A. S. BARNES & COMPANY, NEW YORK 



BOOKS TO HAVE AND KEEP 



THE CITIZEN. A Study of the Individual and the Government. 
By Nathaniel Southgate Sbaler. nmo. Cloth. $1.40 net. 

" There could be nothing better for intelligent young men 
than to read Professor Shaler's book." Hartford Times. 

' ' Sound advice crystalized to serve as a guide to rising gene 
rations of voters and to citizens." Indianapolis Sentinel. 

NAPOLEON: A Short Biography. By R. M. Johnston. With 
frontispiece and maps. I 2mo. Cloth, gi.oonet. Third edition. 

"Admirable. A clear and comprehensive review of Napo 
leon's career, of his military achievements, and of his work as 
a legislator." London Spectator. 

"Mr. Johnston's book is popular history of the best class 
scholarly, readable and acute. It is not only possible to read 
this volume, but it is difficult to deny one's self the pleasure of 
an uninterrupted perusal." The Nation. 

RECOLLECTIONS OF RICHARD HENRT STODDARD: 
PERSONAL AND LITER ART. Edited by Ripley Hitch 
cock. With a Preface by Edmund Clarence Stedman. Illus 
trated, izmo. Cloth. Gilt top. $1.50 net. 
"His friendships he has recorded beautifully." 

New Tork Evening Post. 

"I wish that I had more space to write of this most interest 
ing book. The only thing to do is to read the book yourself." 
jeanette L. Gilder, in the Chicago Tribune. 

THE REAL BENEDICT ARNOLD. By Charles Burr Todd. 
Illustrated, izmo. Cloth. Gilt top. 1.20 net. 
"A useful addition to Revolutionary biography." 

Springfield Republican. 

THE TRUE AARON BURR. A Biographical Sketch. By 
Charles Burr Todd. I2mo. Cloth. Gilt top. With por 
traits, 5oc. net. 

"A spirited and interesting defence." The Outlotk. 

A. S. BARNES & COMPANY, NEW YORK 



BOOKS TO HAVE AND KEEP 

LEGENDS OF THE RHINE. By H. A. Guerber. izmo. 
Cloth. 40 full-page illustrations. 356 pp. $*-5 net. 
Fifth edition. 

" As far as one knows there is in English no book which so 
adequately covers the subject." New Tork Globe. 

tf Any pilgrim of the Rhine who goes on his tour without it 
will lose much pleasure and profit." New York Observer. 

HOME THOUGHTS. First and Second Series. By "C" 
(Mrs. James Farley Cox}. 2 Vols. Cloth. Each, $1.20 
net. The set in half-calf, $6.00 net. 

"A certain gracious domestic philosophy characterises * Home 
Thoughts.'" New Tork Evening Post. 

"A book which every mother, wife and daughter in the land 
should read." The Lamp. 

" No wiser book, nor one more sorely needed, has appeared 
for a long time." Hamilton W. Mabie. 

AN AMERICAN CRUISER IN THE EAST. A Voyage to 
the Aleutian Islands, Korea, Japan, China, and the Philippines. 
By Rear-Admiral John D. Ford. I2mo. 200 Illustrations. 
Cloth. Third edition. $1.50 net. 

"A veritable search-light thrown upon the lands and the peo 
ple affected by the late American war with Spain." 

Literary World. 

AMERICA IN THE EAST. By William Elliot Griffis, LL.D. 
Illustrated. izmo. Cloth. $1.50. 

" It is almost a duty for every American to read this book." 

Philadelphia North American. 

" The book ought to be in the hands of every one interested 
in our duty in the Far East." The Outlook. 

A. S, BARNES & COMPANY, NEW YORK 



UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 

Los Angeles 

This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 



Form L9-100m-9,'52(A3105)444 



2 1954 



PS 
3535 

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UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 



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